


I LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. I 






aM+ } 



J UNITED STATUS OF AMERICA. J 



JANUARY and JUNE 



BY 



Benj. F. Taylor. 



NEW YORK: 

Follett, Foster & Co. 

1864. 







Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1860, by 

D. B. COOKE AND CO., 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court, for the Northern District of 



Illinois. 







TO 

JOHN B. RICE, ESQ., 

The True Man, and Firm Friend, this little volume 13 
respectfully inscribed. 



€anit%it. 

ffixnt $art* 

PAQB 

life 12 

A Mystery 15 

Pumpkins and Enterprise. . • , . • IT 

Death 18 

'Our Folks' 22 

•Jewelry 30 

Finished 34 

1 Bugs' and Beauties 37 

Ploughshares and Sorrows 41 

Our Defences • 44 

Digging for a * Subject* 50 

Railway Magic 57 

Fourth of July G4 

It Rains G9 

1 Movements' 76 

Hendom .». 84 

Chicken Pie 91 



Vlll CONTENTS. 

PAGB 

Happiness ' at Cost' 95 

Aerial Rehearsal 97 

Domestic Enchantment 100 

An Unscientific Chat about Music 104 

The Wind and the Night 115 

'The Stage is Coming' 124 

A Summer Day in Haying 127 

The Last Rose of Summer « 139 



Secontr apart* 

Fall 143 

Indian Summer 148 

'And Such a Change' 153 

The Old Times and the New 157 

Queer Estimates ...... ,...<► 160 

A Yoice from the Past , 164 

Waiting 166 

ISfo Room for Two' 170 

The Grammar of Life /.. 172 

'Don't Forget' 180 

Blessed Almanacs 183 

The Wonders of ■ Galena' 186 

The Old-fashioned Fire 188 



CONTENTS. IX 

pag a 

Presto! Change! 191 

Voices of the Dead 195 

Thanksgiving 202 

The Old Garret 206 

A Half-hour at the Window 210 

Our Paper 220 

Biding on a Rail • 242 

Winter Nights 249 

The Last of Ten 262 

* Shadows we are* 265 

Time Indicted 267 

The Old-fashioned Mother 272 

The Dying Musician 279 



June Dews 82 

The Beautifal River 40 

1 God Bless our Stars for ever' 66 

The Flag-star of Even , 135 

It will all be Right in the Morning' 168 

Moonlight and a Memory 218 

The New Craft in the Offing 240 

Home at Last 261 

The Past is with us still 271 

Broken Memories in Broken Rhymes 276 



dDttf-innr tfJrtttktttgB, 



The "Woeld, now-a-days, live too much " in the 
house:" souls grow angular as the apartments they 
dwell in, and come, like them, to have parlors and 
pantries, closets and coal-holes ; views take color from 
the windows they are seen through ; muffled thoughts 
in listed slippers, walk on carpets, and the firm, free 
footfall upon the bare floors of this great caravansary, 
are not to be heard " by ears polite." 

Sunlight, in-doors, is a nun and enters veiled ; or it 
isa" grocery," poured from a tin can ; or a chemical, 
conducted in an iron tube. The air, in-doors, must 
needs be beaten with fans, into a mockery of motion, 
and music, immured in rosewood and mahogany, is 
manumitted at intervals, by ivory fingers with ivory 
keys. 



12 JANUARY AND JUNE. 

Whoever lias time to look and listen, need only go 
out of doors, to wonder and be charmed. On any 
"quarter section" in the world, may be seen and 
heard, the alphabet of almost all thought, and the 
utterances of almost all tongues. This is not a dis- 
covery ; oh, no ! but only a wreath of vapor to the 
" cloud of witnesses " that have already testified. 



The pulses of great Nature never beat more audi- 
bly and musically than just about " the leafy month 
of June :" life, every where life, in field and flood, in 
earth, and air, and sky. Life in all forms : life with 
a sweet breath in it, life with a song in it, life with 
a light in it. Life tied up in little bags of most 
Quakerish-looking silk, by that sly spinner, the spi- 
der; life done up in gray bundles, and hung upon 
apple trees ; deposited in little brown paper cups, or 
packed away in little clay cells, by gentry in yellow 
jackets, and gentry with delicate waists, whose only 
foible consists in their not being, always and alto- 
gether, like Job and Moses ; life hidden in the hearts 



LITE. 13 

of ripening plums and reddening cherries — find a 
sweeter cradle any where, if you can ; life rocked in 
shells, put up in mother-of-pearl, set in ivory, chased 
w r ith gold, consigned to little graves every where ; laid 
away in " Patent Burial Cases" — just where Fisk 
got the idea — and fastened to rails and fence-posts ; 
life, that, by and by, shall spread wings damp with 
the imprint of this great Stereotyping Establishment 
of the Almighty ; life standing " on end," in little 
boats, and rising into the air, taking to bugle-ing as 
soon as it is born, and evincing, by the presentation of 
" bills " at most unseasonable and unreasonable hours, 
a decided talent for ledger literature ; life sheltering 
itself beneath the leathern umbrella of the mush- 
room, revelling in the rose's red heart, drilled into the 
solid rock, domiciled in mud hovels, along rafters and 
beneath eaves, "playing in the plighted clouds," 
"laid" in a manger, peeping from holes, floating in 
the air, swinging in the wind, skulking under the 
chips, burrowing in the earth, darting along rail 
fences, opening nankeen throats from little baskets of 
twigs, floating in tatters of green baize on the ponds, 
advocating Solomon on birch, "poor Will," talking 
Greek, "brekekek hoax, Jcoax," and practising hydro- 
pathy, Jc'chug; life in bags and boxes, bundles and 



14 JANUARY AND JUNE. 

blankets ; in silks, satins and shells; in " tights," and 
flounces, and feathers and flannels ; life full dressed 
and in dishabille ; life knocking from the centre of 
fallen logs ; knocking from the other side of shells 
white and blue, and mottled and dappled ; and June is 

"The delegated voice of God," 

to bid them " come in, come up, come down, come 
out," and be, and do, and suffer ; conjugating and 
inflecting the great active verb — "Live." 

Turn over the loam in the fields, and you turn out 
turtle's eggs by the score. Go " across lots " to the 
neighbor's, and you find the pearly treasures of the 
whistling quail by the dozen. Tap a sand-hill lightly, 
with the toe of your boot, and you will see the ladies 
to whom Solomon referred sluggards, by the myriad. 
Shake a bush, and you shake out a bird, or a peep, ot 
a bug, or a bud, or something that's "all alive." 
Pluck a leaf, and you may find on it a crystal drop, 
such as one might dream Glueen Mab would shed if 
14 in the melting mood ;" but the sun shall "set " oy 
it a few days, and out will come a tiling all legs, o* 
wings, or stings — something to hum or drum — to fly 
or creep, or crawl ; something to be something and 
some body, and count just as many in the great census 



A MYSTERY. 15 

of Creation, as he who called the shades of Ashland 
his, or she who journeyed, of old, to see Solomon — 
count just as many, " in words and figures following," 
to-wit : (1) one. 



« Things are working " these June days. Things ? 
Wonders withal. Why, quiet as it is here to-day, 
with nothing hut green and hlue in sight— the fields, 
the woods, and the sky— and not a sound of carpen- 
try, save the incessant hammering upon tree-trunks, 
of worthies in red caps, there is more going on than 
one would dream of between the third call and break- 
fast-time ; things that Silliman couldn't do, nor Davy, 

nor Liebig. 

Do you see that cherry tree ? Every one of four 
bushels upon it. There's a ripe one. Use your 
« pickers and stealers," and pluck it. A cherry— red, 
ripe and rich. Fragrance and flavor done up in a 
red wrapper. 

Set your cunning men that conjure with crucibles, 
to make one, and you " set " them of a surely. De- 
pend upon them, and you might, and you would, 



16 JANUARY AND JUNE. 

"make two bites of a cherry." Yet on that modest 
tree, " out of doors," that article was manufactured. 
No furnace sighing from morning till night — no 
workmen in white aprons — no sugar crushed, refined, 
snowy — no flour superfine — no vermilion in pot or 
powder — no parade, no hustle ; hut there they are, 
" cherry ripe !" 

"Winter's cold fingers were lifted from the pulses of 
the tree, and they throbbed full and strong. Pumps 
in the earth below, were rigged and manned. Signals 
were silently set in bud and blossom aloft. Winds 
came, and swung the branches, and peeped into this 
and that, and w r eut away. Birds came and looked 
about, and saw nothing, and went too. Unseen 
hands were gathering, and moulding, and refining all 
the while. The sun came up from the Tropic of 
Capricorn, and looked on — nothing more. The clouds 
went dripping by, and never stopped, and that was 
all. Ed., or Silas, or some body, planted a cherry 
stone, four or five years ago, and forgot it ; but the 
" whip "of a tree went right on, and without any 
help that we can see, set up business, and manufac- 
tured Nature's confectionary, all by itself. Last week 
the cherries were green — now they are tinted with 
red; not a brush lying about, not a stained finger 



PUMPKINS AND ENTERPRISE. 17 

visible. No advertisements in the newspapers, of 
" Painting done here ;" no "Apprentices wanted," for 
Nature's hands are all journeymen ; not a leaf with 
a capital or an exclamation point on it. Ah ! that 
" May Duke " belongs to the Royal Family of— 
Nature. 



Last summer, I remember, a little vine — a Pump- 
kin vine — came out of the ground in a cornfield, ' up 
the road/ and there it was, in the midst of the corn 
unseeing and unseen. So there was nothing for it, 
but to make the best of its way out to the fence that 
bounded the road, some eighteen or twenty feet dis- 
tant, where there would be some prospect of its being 
appreciated, if it could. Could ? But it did, for 
away it went, vine and leaves, baggage and all, 
through the corn, this way and that, out to the fence, 
and up the fence, three rails, and through the fence. 
And what do you think it did then ? Just unravelled 
a delicate yellow blossom, and held it there, for every 
one passing to see, saying all the time, as well as it 
could — and it could as well as any body — " It's me ! 



18 JANUARY AND JUNE. 

See what I 've done— this ! Isn't it pretty ?" Well, 
there it held it, and every "body saw it, and no tody 
thought any thing about it. 

Passing that way in the Fall, lo ! a Pumpkin, 
rotund, golden, magnificent, held out at arm's length 
by the little vine ; held in the air — held week after 
week, and never laid down, nights, nor Sundays, nor 
any time. 

Now, "man your brakes" — rig your levers, ye 
Archimedes-es, and pump up from the earth, and 
along that vine, and from the surrounding air, the raw 
material for just such another article as that, and you 
shall have two summers to do it in. Bring on the 
Alembic, wherein shall be distilled from the falling 
rain, the essence of Pumpkin, and we'll let it go 
without painting. 



The world is curved round about with Heaven, and 
Heaven never seems nearer than in June. Its great 
blue rafters bend low on every hand, and how one 
can get out of the world, without getting into Heaven, 
is to us a physical mystery. 



DEATH. 19 

Childhood enters life at the east, coming in, like a 

young swallow, "beneath the eaves ; but like Desde- 

mona's handkerchief, he is "little," and he stands 

erect under the low-curved roof. On he goes, into the 

middle of the w r orld. How swells the dome above 

him, and manhood is erect still. But " westward 

westward,"- is the word, and by and by, he bends his 

head beneath the roof. They say he is old — that the 

weight of years is on him — that he is looking for a 

place to sleep ; but it is only that he may clear the 

rafters. Low and lower does he bend, until, with 

form quite doubled, he creeps out just between He a 

ven and Earth, and is seen no more. 

Death is not afraid of the sunshine, for he comes 

in June. The rustle of ten thousand leaves does not 

startle him ; the breath of ten thousand flowers does 

not charm him away. Indeed he loves flowers, for 

has not a dainty Singer declared that he reaps 

" The bearded grain at a breath, 
And the flowers that grow between?" 

There's a house down in the valley — you can see 
it from my window — where, when they numbered 
their treasures, they said, and kept saying, "three, 
three, three," and there was melody in the monosyl- 
lable — a trinity of blessing in the "three;" but 



20 JANUARY AND JUNE. 

Death was counting all the while, and " one " he wa3 
numbering as his own, and his count — alas ! for it — ■ 
was the surest. One star fell from the blue air ; it 
w T as Heaven aloft, still. One white rose drifted down 
to earth ; it was summer all the same. And so — 
and so what ? Philosophy may analyze a tear, but 
it cannot curve a hope in it — it cannot bid it " ex- 
hale." It may make a spectrum, but it cannot make 
a smile. And the text for this is a brief one : 

DIED, 

On Saturday night, the 1 8th of June, 

End of the little week of Life, 

And it is Sunday to-morrow and to-morrow, 

Edith J. Darling, 

Aged 13. 

Amiable, she won all; intelligent, she charmed 

all ; fervent, she loved all ; and 

dead, she saddened all. 

Beside the little brother who had gone on before, 
an empty chrysalis is lying. Who seeks Edith? 
There is a realm where 

" Decembers as pleasant as May" — 

where it is June all the year long. There is a 
Recording Angel, and a book lies open before him , 
and the page for " June 18th, '53," bears, in letters 
of light, the name — Edith. 



DEATH 21 

A dream-eyed daughter of the " drowsy Eust " lost 
a favorite Gazelle. It wandered away in the Persian 
gardens, and its young Mistress had followed it all 
the long afternoon. It had come at her call ; it had 
eaten from her hand ; it had rested its head on her 
bosom ; it was timid, and she won it ; tender, and she 
cherished it ; helpless, and she loved it. And now it 
had gone ; the shadows were deepening and length- 
ening, and the lost was not found. All the afternoon 
she had traced it, by the imprint its little feet had 
left upon the enamelled and emerald sod ; but night 
came on, and, what for the tears and the darkness, 
the footsteps grew dim, like a half-effaced memory of 
something loved and lost. 

She knelt upon the turf, and bending low, still read 
the records of the truant's wanderings, and followed 
them. But the shadows fell too heavily at last, and 
she sat among the flowers and wept ; and as she wa3 
mourning, there came to her the fragrance of a flower 
sweeter than its fellows, and with the sweetness came 
the thought, still sweeter : her favorite's foot had 
crushed it, till it uttered that fragrant sigh. So filled 
with hope, she followed the Gazelle through the dark- 
ness by the perfume in its pathway, and she found it 
at last, its lips reddened with red roses, its limbs laved 



22 JANUARY AND JUNE. 

in white lilies, sweetly reposing in the " Gardens or 
Paradise." 

There was joy that night amid the darkness and 
dews. The maiden returned, hut she left her heart 
in token that the treasure lying there was her own ; 
for she had read some where, hut not in the Koran, 
" Where your treasure is, there will your heart be 
also." 



*•*;* gain: 9 

"Our Folks" — we have folks; folks of whose 
names, ages, and occupations the Census gives no ac- 
count ; folks as good as any body's, " and these are 
of them :" A flaunting, pompous, Pharisaical Grape 
Vine, with very broad, green phylacteries, bids fair to 
overrun the entire premises. It made its appearance, 
I am told, near the kitchen-door, a few years ago, in 
a very meek, unostentatious manner — a statement, 
considering the " complexion to which it has come at 
last," requiring about as much credulity as there is 
vine, to believe. Its aspirations were soon manifested 
in the display of divers mermaidish-looking ringlets, 



OUR FOLKS. 23 

with two or three dainty "quirls" therein, flung out to 
the wind, and fluttering very gaily indeed. 

Its ambitious tendencies "being early discovered, a 
frame, large enough to satisfy any thing short of a 
Corsican ambition, was erected ; and the Vine roofed 
it, and walled it, and festooned it, and hung rich 
clusters of grapes around it, and filled it with fra- 
grance, and broke it down, and — and tvhat ? That's 
just it — and what should it do next ? Those green 
ringlets were set afloat again, and the Vine made 
most insidious advances towards a respectable Apple 
Tree that stood near ; which, being young, and inex- 
perienced in the wiles and ways of Catawbas, Isa- 
bellas, and the like, permitted its attentions. So the 
Vine encircled its waist very lovingly with a tendril 
and a tendresse that would have been pronounced 
"quite the thing " in the first circles. Any body 
would have supposed, for a while, that it would be 
whirling away with the Apple Tree in a waltz 
through the Orchard. It did no such thing ; but just 
clambered up higher and higher, and swayed this 
way and that, and whispered, and swung, and ca- 
ressed, and made itself as agreeable as possible. By 
and by, it half said, half sighed, ' Let me fling a 
wreath over you, sweet Tree/ and a wreath it was. 



2-1 JANUARY AND JUNE. 

1 Just a festoon or two ;' and festoons almost hid the 
poor Tree from view. 

Now the Yine crept up, sans ceremonie, put out its 
great broad leaves, and disposed its clusters to the 
sun and in the shade alamode, and thought nothing 
of the means whereby it had gotten " up in the 
world." Meanwhile, its victim struggled on a year 
or two ; paid a feeble tribute to Flora, and a feebler 
one to Pomona — if that's her name — while the Yine 
heaped the Summer on its half-leafless branches, and 
rolled up like a great green billow into the sun. Not 
content with this, the unprincipled tiling paid its ad- 
dresses to a Peach Tree, and more than half ruined 
it ; but the Tree bore it all patiently, and never said 
a word, and never " peached." And so the Yine 
Iceejis "going on," to the great "taking on" of all 
orderly Apple and Peach Trees, and the great scandal 
of the neighborhood. 

ANOTHER OP THEM. 

A gentleman in a suit of sober brown pays daily 
devoirs and devours to a Cherry Tree near the house. 
Taking one or two of the ripened rubies, dainty fel- 
low that he is, he sits and amuses himself by the 
hour, echoing the various notes that are uttered around 



OUR FOLKS. 25 

him. He is a decided Robin, a querulous Cat-bird, a 
veritable Thrush, and a positive Goldfinch, by turns, 
and sometimes, as if a hand-organ should go crazy, 
and play all its tunes at once, he gives them all to- 
gether. The northern Mocking Bird is a "charac- 
ter," though he has none of his own, and never was 
known to utter an original idea upon music in his 
life. He has many relatives who never wear feathers 
except in hats and bonnets, and whose chief merit is 
that of a blank wall, saying nothing of themselves, 
but giving back imperfectly, the utterances of others. 
This worthy in October brown is not a Bachelor, as 
one might surmise by his freedom from care, and 
light merry air, but a very respectable Benedict. His 
family, three members — one died in shell-dom — reside 
in a little Oak tree across the road, and are nearly 
ready to leave the old homestead, and " do for them- 
selves." What a medley of Sparrows and Quails, of 
Blue Jay and Robin, lies within the circumference 
of that little nest ; and they are all " Our Folks." 

"and so on." 

Every evening, a little after sunset, a "Wiiippoor- 
wtll takes up his position and his trisyllabic song on 
a fallen tree, not far from the house. A queer bird. 



26 JANUARY AND JUNE. 

careless in domestic matters — for it builds no nest of 
any account — it sits and sings through the deepening 
twilight on into the moonlight ; and if you creep suffi- 
ciently near, you will see that it positively "beats 
time with its little foot upon the log, and hear, "be- 
tween the strains, a click like that of a clock just as 
it strikes the hour. 

A rare Music Box is the Whippoorwill, manufac- 
tured, tuned, and wound by the same fingers that 
keyed the spheres to their sublime harmonies. 

"LITTLE JEMMY." 

And there's " Jemmy," a little top-knotted, green- 
coated Canary of some five months, that sits in his 
cage, crumbles his cracker, notches his fresh lettuce, 
cracks his Canary seed, makes his toilet, and ogles the 
Yellow Birds that ride around his prison on the swells 
of the air. 

A while ago, Jemmy was slightly depressed, and 
' 'for cause," as will be seen. Relying too much on 
the twist in the conjugal tie, Lucy — she's one of " Our 
Folks," but the Census Takers have her " description" 
— suffered Jemmy's wife, Nelly, to fly out to a Lilac 
Tree in front of the house, supposing, of course, she 
would fly back on wings of love ; but the swaying 



OUR FOLKS. 27 

boughs, the free air, and, I sadly fear, the blandish- 
ments of some unprincipled Lothario of a Goldfinch, 
were too much for poor Nelly's virtue, and she never 
returned to her allegiance ; so Jemmy has kept 
Bachelor's Hall ever since. 

" Nelly was a lady ;" at least, so we all thought; 
but, the other day, she made her appearance in a 
Peach Tree, right in sight of her lord and master — 
decidedly the worst thing I know of her — accompa- 
nied by a suspicious-looking fellow in buff waistcoat 
and "inexpressibles." We didn't — "Our Folks"— . 
much approve of the twitterings and chirpings be- 
tween them ; but Jemmy is a good deal of a philoso- 
pher ; so he turned about upon his perch as noncha- 
lant as a Regent Street fashionable. There was a 
little swelling in his throat. Was it a rising sigh ? 
Nothing of the sort ; for he warbled a ditty — not of 
the strongest, we confess, but then musical, resigned, 
Jemmy-like — the burden of which was, as nearly as 
I could make it out, something like this : " Not a — 
whistle — for Nelly, Nell, Nelly, give I ; not a — ivar- 
blc—z, tivitter — a quaver — care I. This — crotchet — 
of Nelly's a — minim — to me !" The very day that 
Nelly deserted Jemmy's perch and pickings, a driving 
storm swept over the country, and there was a sound 



28 JANUARY AND JUNE. 

of great lamentation for Nelly ; but, alas ! she was 
left to a worse fate. There is no telling what Co- 
quettes, or Canaries, or any of us may come to, if left 
to ourselves. 

P. AN EVERLASTING PEA. 

An Ever-last-ing Pea — the last of " Our Folks" 
to-day — a sweet thing to look at, but with no more 
breath than an Oyster, has been growing neglected 
beside the door for a long time. Several impudent 
Burdocks and saucy Pigweeds had grown over it and 
around it ; and there it was without a frame, a staff, 
or even a thread to help itself with, and climb out of 
the way, up into the air, and be beautiful, and be 
admired. 

There it was, struggling alone, and running all 
over the ground, and getting no where, when, one day, 
a bolder branch, that had gone out some where for 
succor, discovered the Lightning Conductor. There 
was a way up and out, indeed ; and why shouldn't a 
Pea as well as a People run on a Rail ? And here 
was an aerial Railway, ready and in " running order," 
for the creeper and climber. So it encircled the cold 
iron, and swung itself up ; and whither it might have 
gone, and what it might have done, is more than 



OUR FOLKS. 29 

any body knows ; but a frame — such as it was — was 

built, and the truant tethered with a string. One 

thing it did was this : laid a blushing leaf close to 

the cold, dark iron. And what for ? Why, claiming 

relationship, of a truth. Iron tinted that leaf to " the 

color of virtue." Iron makes those Roses glow in 

their new frames beside the path. Indeed, one could 

almost write poetry without inspiration, only give 

him plenty of iron : 

The jarring of the iron wheels along the iron rails ; 

The anvils with their iron din beneath the iron flails ; 

The panting of the iron forge ; the twang of iron wire ; 

The music of an iron age ; of iron and of fire ; 

The netting of the iron nerve that's thrilling through the 

world ; 
. The iron bayonet to the bolt by glittering tempests hurled ; 
The thunder of the iron loom ; the shuttle's plunging steel ; 
The weaving of the zones of earth — five ribbons round a 

reel ; 
The couplet of the iron song, of which two bars are sung, 
That makes as dear as "household words" the Anglo-Saxon 

tongue ; 
The clanking of the iron Press, the echo of the Age, 
While waking Thought, with iron tread, leaves foot-printa 

on the page; 
All sinews are of iron now; all breathings are of fire; 
And engines with their iron hearts can toil and never tire; 
The winds are lulled, but iron craft are panting round the 

globe ; 
And iron needles ravel out old Ocean's seamless robe. 
In calm Pacific's golden — 



30 JANUARY AND JUNE 

but, 'tis a hard theme ; and, printers permitting, I'll 
" mind my P's and Q/s" again. There was some- 
thing of almost classic beauty in the sight : a green, 
luxuriant vine encircling a rude bayonet, fixed by the 
fingers of Philosophy, against the lightnings of 
Heaven ; the rusty route of the thunder-bolt wreathed 
in the beauty of Summer ; a token of amity extended 
upon the " present arms" of Science to the tempest ; 
an offering from the warm bosom of a June earth tc 
the genii of the cloudy caverns of the air. 

Does some body ask you what you think of " Our 
Folks ?" Pray, don't mind me ; but utter it boldly, 
like a Jeffreys. 



Nature was out in her Jewelry this morning, or, 
as some body's little Charley, or Molly, or Johnny 
would say, in her " Dewelry" and that's just the 
word wanted — glittering with the young rain that 
waits its wings. 

By the way, that Nimrod in science who went 
hunting the Dew, and made a fame that shall last 
forever : "Wasn't it a pretty idea when, placing the 



JEWELRY. 31 

bulbs of delicate thermometers in the bosoms of lilies 
and the hearts of young roses, he felt the pulses of 
the flowers as they grew ? Wasn't it fairy-like work 
for a mortal man to be doing ? 

And then, when he found that the buds and the 
blossoms were all the cooler as they needed moisture 
the more ; and the truth sparkled out that Dew is the 
invisible vapor floating in the air, which, chilled by 
the cool surfaces of the flowers, bursts into tears over 
the beauty that must fade ; and when he found that 
this aerial, this gossamer-winged water, is the singing, 
and sighing, and cursing, and blessing of all day yes- 
terday — the music of the Summer all written out in, 
legible score — notes sparkling and beautiful, every 
one — do you think a civic crown could have made 
him greater or happier ? 

And when he found that in cloudy nights, when 
there was no Dew, it was because the heat radiated 
from the earth, was reflected down again from the 
clouds, and so, like a beautiful pendulum, it vibrated 
to and fro — the clods and the clouds, the clouds and 
the clods — and the earth could not grow cold, and 
its breath could not condense, and there, beneath the 
Btars, like the pulses of a mighty breast, beating softly 
against the downy covering of cloud all the night 



32 JANUARY AND JUNE. 

long ! — would our Hunter, do you think, have changed 
fames with the tinker of the clock of Strasburg ? 

There is one little circumstance — most awkward 
word is that " circumstance" — which perhaps I should 
hid adieu to the Dews without noting : that they 
have sparkled for decades of centuries, and every body, 
from the bards of a thousand years to the last scribbler 
for a scrap-book, has likened them to every thing, and 
every thing to them, that is lucent and lovely, and 
blessed and beautiful ; and yet, all the while, until a 
few days or so ago, no body knew where they were 
born, whether they rose, or fell, or flew, or, as child- 
ren say, "just come c? themselves.'" And yet philo- 
sophers, or "so they say," gurgled Hebrew before 
Remus was "naughty" to his brother, and leaped 
Heme's wall. 

Few there are, who dream how blessed and beauti- 
ful, sad and solemn, are the components of Dew, 
and here is a recipe therefor : 

3 u 11 e 29 s to 8 ♦ 

The breath of the leaves and the lyrics of dawn 

Were floating away in the air ; 
The brooks and the birds were all singing aloud • 

The violets looking a prayer, 
With eyes that upturned so tearful and true, 

Like Mary's of old, when forgiven, 



JUNE DEWS. 33 

Had caught the reflection and mirrored it there, 

As bright and as melting as heaven. 
The silvery mist of the red robin's song, 

Slow swung in the wind-wavered nest ; 
The billows that swell from the forests of June, 

Almost to the blue of the blest ; 
" The bells" that are rung by the breath of the breeze^ 

And " toll their perfume" as they swing ; 
The brooks that are trolling a tune of their own, 

And dance to whatever they sing ; 
The groan of the wretched, the laugh of the glad, 

Are blent with the breath of a prayer ; 
The sigh of the dying, the whisper of love, 

A vow that was broken, are there ! 
There dimly they float, 'mid the ripe, golden hours, 

Along the bright trellis of air ; 
The smothered good-bye, and the whisper of love, 

The ban and the blessing are there ! 
Cool fingers are weaving the curtains again, 

Whose woofing is netted with stars ; 
The tremulous woods on the verge of the world, 

Just bending beneath the blue spars, 
Are valanced with crimson and welted with gold. 

Where now are the vesper and vow — 
Those spirit-like breathings of sadness and song, 

That brought not a cloud o'er the brow, 
Bedimmed not a beam of the bright summer morn? 

Not wafted away, for the aspen is still ; 
Not fled on the wings of the hours; 

Not hiding the heaven — lo ! the stars in the clear-, 
Not perished, but here on the flowers — 

Those smiles of Divinity lighting the world, 
Whose breath is for ever a prayer ; 

Who blush without sinning, and blanch without fear; 
Oh! where should they be, if not there? 



34 JANUARY AND JUNE. 



There is a "beautiful significance in the fact that 
when Divinity would huild a temple for Himself en 
earth, he commanded that it should rise without the 
sound of hammer, and so, 

"Like some tall pine, the noiseless fabric grew." 

The Hammer is the emblem of man's creations. 
About his rarest works you will find it ; hidden in a 
corner, resting on a column, lying behind a statue ; it 
is some where. Heap about the pedestal whereon 
stands the " Greek Slave" the chips and the chisels, 
the gravers and the hammers, and how is the magic 
of the marble diminished or destroyed ! It is no 
longer a being waked from the sleep of creation, 
throwing off its Parian shroud, and only waiting the 
whisper of Omnipotence to breathe, but a stone, 
blasted, and pried, and tugged, and lifted from some 
body's quarry; perforated, and chipped, and hewn; 
modelled in clay by a man in an apron, and wrought 
out " by the hardest" by macaroni-eating barbarians 
in short jackets and blue caps. The dead waking, 
the dumb eloquent, the silent thought shaping out and 



FINISHED. 35 

indwelling the marble, all vanish, " like the baseless 
fabric of a vision,'' at the sight of a hammer. The 
Yankee l sees into it,' and 'guesses' a lathe could 
be made ' to turn' the thing out in half the time, and 
is * sure as preaching' he was born to make it. He 
wonders if it couldn't be ' run' in a mould ; if plas- 
ter wouldn't do as well ; whether the least ' tick! of 
red paint wouldn't make her lips 'kinder' human, 
and a pink skirt more like a Christian ? He ' can't 
see why' it should cost 'such a tarnal sight;' and 
where are the beauty and the poetry of the Greek 
Slave ? Ask, " "Where are the birds that sang an 
hundred years ago ?" as well. 

In the construction of this great Temple of the 
World, find, if you can, a moulding, a cornice, an ar- 
chitrave, with a rivet in it ; any puttying of nails, or 
hiding of seams, or painting over of patches. Oh ! 
no ; every thing is finished, no matter where, no mat- 
ter how you find it. All the blue masonry of Night 
was done without trowel or hammer. No quick clip 
of scissors scalloping the leaves of ten thousand 
flowers; no ring from the mighty anvil, whence 
scintillate, nightly, the sparks of starry time ; no 
brushes, or pencils, or patterns, lying about rose-trees 
and woodbines ; no " staging" discovered round tho 



36 JANUARY AND JUNE. 

oak as it goes up ; no mortising machines nor mallets 
beneath it, though the great arms securely fastened to 
tin? column, are swaying bravely aloft. 

AYho ever sat up late enough at night, or rose long 
enough before the sun in the morning, to find any 
thing unfinished ? If a bud, 'twas done ; if a blos- 
som, perfect ; a leaf or a leaflet, alike nonpareil. Bid 
the " Seven Wise Men of Greece" sit in solemn con- 
clave over a budded rose, and what one of them 
would dream there was any thing more to be done, 
any thing more to be desired ? 

"Who ever detected, any where, a leaflet half 
fashioned or a flower half painted ? a brush's careless 
trail on some little thing that peeps out of the cleft 
of a rock, and dodges back again at a breath ; some 
little thing of no consequence, that no body hardly 
ever, if ever, sees ? Ah ! no ; as delicately finished, 
fashioned, and perfumed, as if it had bloomed in the 
conservatory of a queen, and been destined for the 
wreath that encircles her brow. 

Every thing of Heaven's handiwork is finished, from 
first to last ; from the Plan of Salvation, ' finished' 
upon Calvary, to the violet ' finished,' that opens its 
blue eye to the dew. 



' BUGS AND BEAUTIES. 17 



For the last five minutes, a Miller in a dusty 
suit of " silver gray" has been fluttering round the 
candle. Yesterday afternoon, his royal cousin, the 
Butterfly, that some body, so Cowley-like, called " a 
winged flower," was fluttering round a sunbeam. But 
no dusty miller was this, in sober gray, for when Na- 
ture painted it, she spared no tint of the richest and 
rarest that would render it beautiful — that would 
" show" in the sun. There's a fellow in dark brown 
now, creeping over the sheet as I write. It stopped 
at the word, ' Butterfly,' and crawled contemptuously 
over it. This Mr. Brown is never seen in the day- 
time, but looks well enough by lamplight, starlight, 
or moonlight. Any thing more would be useless, be- 
cause "unsight, unseen," as the boys say. Had it 
been other than a night-walker, it would have been 
spotted with gold, specked with vermilion, tricked out 
with indigo-blue legs, or rigged with transparencies. 
Kature is altogether an artist, and though with all 
the dyes of the rainbow at command, and to spare, 
exhibits a most remarkable and commendable economy 



S3 JANUARY AND JUNE. 

in her adornings. Show me a flower opening only at 
night, and I will almost always show you one that 
has taken the white veil or affects a demure gray. 
She is equally judicious in her varnishing : the upper 
surfaces of millions of leaves — how glossy and polished ! 
Three coats of paint and six of varnish, by the palette 
of Reubens ! But the lower surfaces, just as nice, but 
neither so green nor so glossy ; it would be of no use, 
and besides, they could not breathe freely through new . 
paint. 

Speaking of coloring : isn't it a little queer, or is it 
just as might be expected, that John Galt should 
come all the way across the ocean, out of two thick- 
nesses of London fog, to tell people " to the manor 
born" what color an American sky is, in the summer, 
toward sunset ? Or that they should marvel to learn 
it is an apj)le~greeK~-th.e reflection of those great 
emeralds of earth, the Prairies, and those miles on 
miles of forest billows, that roll up and up, and fling 
their green spray into heaven ? Poetasters, poor fel- 
lows ! how blank they'd look — wouldn't they ? — 
should a law be passed, forbidding their babble about 
azure, blue, and cerulean skies ; and they compelled, 
if they spoke at all, to say, ' Oh ! apple-green heavens !' 

Nature is not half so pains-taking with very early 



" BUGS" AJST3 BEAUTIES. 39 

morning as with the later day, and for the best reason 
in life, there's no body " up " to see. So she makes it 
a neat steel-gray, inlaying a piece or two of pearl here 
and there, and looping up round the edges, a few odd 
bits of red ribbon. IToon she doesn't mind much. 
To be sure the coloring is rich and warm, but then, 
nothing like a master-piece. But ' come night,' 
when the labor of the world is pretty near done, she 
1 lays herself out ' in the West, exactly where every 
body would naturally be looking, and gathers there, 
the pearl and gel I of morning, the glow and glory of 
noon, and the Tyrian tints of night. She spreads 
there, unbended rainbows from dismantled clouds ; 
she gives there, patterns for the sea-shells to tint by — 
a red and a white that set the pattern for York and 
Lancaster — themes for a thousand preachers, and 
songs for a thousand bards. 

On such a night, in such a June, who has not sat, 
side by side, with some body, for all the world like 
" Jenny June ?" May-be it was years ago ; but it 
was some time. May-be you had quite forgotten it ; 
but you will be the better for remembering it. May- 
be she has " gone on before," where it is June all the 
year long, and never January at all ; but God forbid ! 

There it was, and then it was, and thus it was : 



40 JANUARY AND JUNE. 



2T f) c beautiful 3& i b c r . 

Like a Foundling in slumber, the summer day lay 

On the crimsoning threshold of Even, 
And I thought that the glow through 'the azure-arched 
way, 

Was a glimpse of the coming of Heaven. 
There together we sat by the beautiful stream : 
"We had nothing to do, but to love and to dream, 

In the days that have gone on before. 
These are not the same days, though they bear the saine 

name, 
With the ones I shall welcome no more. 

But it may be, the angels are culling them o'er, 

For a Sabbath and Summer for ever, 
When the years shall forget the Decembers they wore, 

And the shroud shall be woven, no, never! 
In a twilight like that, Jenny June for a bride, 
Oh ! what more of the world could one wish for beside, 

As we gazed on the River unroll'd, 
Till Ave heard, or we fancied, its musical tide, 

When it flowed through the Gate-way of gold ? 

Jenny June, then I said, let us linger no more, 

On the banks of the beautiful River — 
Let the boat be unmoored, and be muffled the oar, 

And we'll steal into Heaven together. 
If the Angel on duty our coming descries, 
You have nothing to do but throw off the disguise 

That you wore while you wandered with me, 
And the Sentry shall say, " Welcome back to the skies; 

We have long been a-waitin<* for thee." 



PLOUGHSHARES AND SORROWS. 41 

Oh! how sweetly she spoke, ere she uttered a word, 

With that blush, partly hers, partly Even's, 
And that tone, like the dream of a song we once heard, 

As she whispered, 'That way is not Heaven's ; 
For the River that runs by tne realm of the Blest 
Has no song on its ripple, no star on its breast — 

Oh ! that River is nothing like this ! 
For it glides on in shadow, beyond the world's west, 

Till it breaks into beauty and bliss.' 

I am lingering yet, but I linger alone, 

On the banks of the Beautiful River. 
Tis the twin of that day, but the wave where it shone, 

Bears the willow tree's shadow for ever! 



Great grief in the clover just now, and every body 
but "Rachel, weeping for her children." For a few 
days past, they have kept a thing, a machine, a mon- 
ster, going in the Clover Field, that they call a " break- 
ing-up plough," and it is well named for an ill business ; 
inasmuch as it interferes with more domestic arrange- 
ments, and destroys more domestic happiness and hopes, 
than " Consuelo " or the Last War — in fact, it breaks 
uj) whole families. 

Talk about " beating swords into ploughshares!" 



42 JANUARY AND JUNE. 

If this identical implement had been turned into a 

dozen good broad-swords, in these " piping times of 

peace," it would have hastened the Millennium, at 

least one generation, in the Meadow hack of the 

Orchard. 

What John Rogers-like families of infant mice were 

orphaned ; what snug and cozy little homes were 

destroyed, no body can tell. If all ploughmen were 

poets, and all poets were Burns-es, and all Burns-es 

had sung, 

*' But, rnousie, tliou art not alane, 
In proving foresight may be vain ; 
The best laid schemes o' mice an' men 

Gang aft a-gley, 
An' lea'e us naught but grief and pain 
For promised joy," 

it wouldn't mend the matter ; it wouldn't turn back 
the turf, nor restore the wee ones to their "mither" 
again. 

Two of the beautifully dappled eggs of the Meadow 
lark were brought in by one of the ' boys,' this morn- 
ing, thus left without " a local habitation ;" furnish- 
ing, so it seems to us, an admirable escapement for 
the overflowing philanthropy that renders so many 
people so very miserable. Wouldn't "a nest for the 
riestless " society be just the thing ! And if some* 



PLOUGHSHARES AND SORROWS. 43 

tody, whose sympathies have teen " wool-gathering" 
at the sources of the White Nile, would volunteer to — 
I feel a delicacy about suggesting it — to — to hatch 
the eggs aforesaid, two innocents would be spared an 
untimely fate. They are wrapped in cotton- wool, 
awaiting orders. " References exchanged." 

Fire has also been called into requisition, to finish 
the work commenced by the share. Hard by a 
brush-heap, a Quail had hidden her summer hopes — 
sixteen spotless eggs — a cup full of pearls; within 
which, ere long, " Spiritual Rappings " should be 
heard, and a brood of life emerge, and skulk away, 
each with his cradle of a shell upon his back. The 
sad story is soon told ; they set fire to the pile, that 
was to become a funeral-pyre ; the brush sparkled 
and blazed, the logs kindled and glowed, but the bird> 
Phoenix-like, -sat upon her nest. The flames surgcwl 
around her, but when the dark volumes of smoke 
lifted, ' our bird was still there.' The red fire at last, 
drove over the nest ; the very straws were lighted, and 
the mother whirled despairingly away with a cry of 
anguish, and was seen no more. Many a heart 
heaves the twin billows of Circassian bosoms to-day, 
neither so true nor so wrung, as the little morsel of 
irritable muscle in the breast of that Quail motile* 



44 JANUARY AND JUNE. 

Many a marble has been graven and set up over less 
worth. Many an eloquent tribute has been paid to 
the memory of a less melancholy fate. 



"Who talks of arsenals and armories — of Colt's 
Revolvers and " Dupont's best," when, on this quiet 
farm, in this peaceful neighborhood, where every body 
believes in the New Dispensation, Elihu Burritt, and 
Universal Brotherhood, there are more weapons of 
war, aggressive and defensive, than ever followed the 
Roman Eagles to conquest ? 

"Why, you can meet any where, gentlemen in black, 
who wear rapiers, that are whipped out upon cause 
the slightest — I always give them a wide berth — 
and whole communities of individuals, engaged in 
"the sugar trade," to say nothing of "the cotton 
line," that carry blades, Toledo-tempered every one 
of them, and make nothing of using them too. 

Under that pile of plank, boards a Watchman, one 
of Nature's own " Charlies," springing a rattle that 
" Old Hays" would have patented, and flourishing a 
case of lancets that Cooper would have coveted. 



" OUR DEFENCES. 45 

Chivalry is here ; for gallant knights in long spurs, 
Btalk about the yards, and challenge each other from 
the tops of the fences. A genius crept out of the 
grass yesterday, with shield and breast-plate, like an 
old Roman. It was, as if one should invert a huge 
shell card-basket, give it a serpent's head, an ele- 
phant's feet, and a lizard's " continuation," inscribe it 
all over with Chinese characters, and " let it run." 

Every evening, a "Worthy of the Q,uill comes rus- 
tling out from under the barn; quills behind his ears ; 
quills under his arms ; in fact, a back-load of quills. 
A very pungent, pointed author is he, with his 
quills ; has talent for a modern critic, would work for 
his board, and ought to be encouraged. 

Go" across lots " to Charles', and you will catch 
glimpses of pairs of little heels without owners, 
twinkling in every direction : Gophers going for 
quarters. Unfitted for a field fight, too weak for a 
sortie, they are prepared to stand a siege in their sub- 
terranean fastnesses. Set your Sappers and Miners 
to unearth the Garrison, and they will find the fortress 
deserted and the Gophers gone; for they have a 
proverb among them — those Gophers — that has been 
^rudely translated into English, thus: "There are 
more ways than one." 



46 



JANUARY AND JUNE. 



Do you see that glitter between the trees ? It's a 
magnificent trinket, of which Nature has left a num- 
ber hereabouts. It's a mirror, and how it came here, 
and all about it, is, as nearly as any body knows, in 
this wise. Some day or other, Nature made liei 
toilet here, preparatory to going out upon the Prai- 
ries ; and while she was arranging her hair, putting 
on her flowered sandals, and letting down her broidered 
skirts, that she had gathered up as she crossed the 
Alleghanies, she caught a glimpse ' of the Prairie she 
had come to smile on, and forgot she w r as in disha- 
bille, and left her " things" — mirrors, and flounces, 
and furbelows, and all — scattered about, and never 
thought of them again, for away she tripped and 
smiled. 

Well, that glitter you see, is one of the "aids to 
reflection" she threw aside as she ran, and it was 
shattered into ever so many beautiful fragments, and 
among them is Pine Lake, where, "an you will," we 
are. this very instant. It's a sunny day ; yre, upon 
the margin of the Lake ; the water, crystal ; you, 
looking down. And looking, you see, lying motion- 
less, a Navigator older than Noah or Jason, or any 
of those "outside barbarians;" a sailor whose fore- 
fishes were literally of ' the first water.' 



" OUR DEFENCES." 47 

Gaily attired, isn't he ? — in a close-fitting suit of 
three-cent pieces, with a row of gold dollars on each 
side, all laid over and over. Your shadow lies along 
the water ; move a little, and you'll see that tho 
fellow's Defences are altogether with Valor's wife, 
his " better part," Discretion. But first, lest you can- 
not, a moment hence, see that oar lying carelessly 
over the stern of the silvery craft. Now move. 
There ! Wasn't that ti specimen of scientific l sculL- 
ing !' Just a flash or two, like a little scimetar, 
and Navigator, three-cent pieces, oars and all are out 
of sight like a Nautilus, without a " Clearance," a 
signal, a "by your leave," or anything of the sort. 

Speaking of Signals : there's some body creeping 
through the grass, every night, with a lantern, and 
there are more than one of them — both bodies and 
lanterns ; and it's either love or war ; a battle-lan- 
tern or a love-light, and it makes little difference 
which : they may be skirmishing, they are certainly 
1 sparking' The Glow Worm is the owner of that 
light, and, little brown creature as it is, it has a rare 
and beautiful possession — finding, may be, its way 
through the night ; signalling, it may be, the "Allied 
Powers," in some tremendous war that " John S. 0. 
Abbott " never heard of; seeking, perhaps, its mate. 



48 JANUARY AND JUNE. 

There's a black "bug, homely as sin. Catch him, 
and he gives you a glimpse of a diamond he is carry- 
ing about him ; and you spare him, of course, because 
he is one of Night and Nature's jewellers. How 
gallantly he ' shows a light,' in the offing over the 
marsh. On the starboard, the larboard ; to wind- 
ward, to leeward ; alow and aloft. But the dawn 
steals on, and the great stars and the little bug toge- 
ther, " pale their ineffectual fires." 

The first two " signs " — if any body will credit it — 
have slipped the halter of the Zodiac, and Aries and 
Taurus are lords of the pasture, trumpeters of flock 
and herd, with two horns a-piece. A slight accident 
to the mason-work about Jericho, recorded in Bible 
History, having been particularly impressed upon my 
mind, I pay special attention to Geography, as defined 
by a very devious rail fence, and take good care to 
keep on this side of it, confessing to no 'penchant for 
swelling a concordance, by figuring in a " parallel 
passage." 

So it is, every where, with every thing. Armed cap- 
a-pie, and if not armed, supplied with some means 
of evasion, disguise or retreat. This moment, a fellow 
of the Beetle tribe comes hurtling through the air, 
tumbling about in the candle-light, blundering against 



" OUR DEFENCES. " 49 

walls and windows, with his everlasting hum-drum of 
wings, like a bee in a hollyhock. And what do you 
think he's done ? Caught up a pair of tongs and 
joined in the grand melee ! There he goes, if you 
don't believe it, the tongs thrust out in front of him, 
wide open, and ready to come lovingly together with 
a will. Try him, if you doubt it. 

" ■ Tr-tr-trr-rt-rt-rrt /" There's a watchword, or 
a pass-word from that cherry tree ; and where is the 
little Look-out ? On that leaf " with a strange de- 
vice." By St. Patrick ! 'tis a Toad in disguise ! 
Nothing like the salient chap in a dusty leather round- 
about, that takes position nightly on the ' outside 
cellar door,' but a gay fellow. Break the limb, gen- 
tly — so ; and you have him exactly under your eye. 
His delicate white kid throat works like a little bel- 
lows. His back — just the color of the leaf he lies 
on, and how beautifully varnished ! — four or five 
coats, shouldn't you think? His sides — a specimen 
of imitation of woods, that might deceive Leather 
Stocking himself. His eyes — overlaid round about 
with gold-leaf, and warranted never to tarnish. In- 
visible in his Kendall green, (if it be Kendall,) he 
uses those compound levers of his, and leaps from 
tree to tree and bough to bough, prophesying, in a 



50 JANUARY AND JUNE. 

small way, of clouds and rain, and such like, and 
answering from out trie rustling green, to his fellow. 

"What then are your Springfield Armory, your Paix- 
hans, and even your floating walls of weed, to the 
arms and munitions of war strown about this quiet 
farm ? What shields and helmets ! what coats of 
mail and disguises ! what broadswords and rapiers ! 
what signals and war-cries ! what prow T ess and strata- 
gem are here ! In the grass, the bushes the earth ; 
on trees, fences, every where ! Who will not say, that 
in comparison with "Ouit Defences," all the devices 
of your cunning workers in iron and in steel, are 
children's idle tovs ! 



gigging isx u Stt&jut, 

Don't say a word till I'm done. You'll waste an 
invoice of indignation that were better saved, if you 
do; and besides, it wouldn't be " manners." I am no 
resurrectimist ; and if I do dig for a " subject," I 
don't find it in a cemetery nor put it in a sack, but 
just take the head — mind ! the head — as Herodias 
did, and serve it up, not on a platter, but on a paper, 
as Herodias didn't. Taking a hoe this morning, (could 



DIG G 12s G FOIi A " SUBJECT." 51 

find no spade but the ace,) I exhumed a toadess, per- 
haps a widow, living all by herself, in underground 
lodgings, as widows have done, and will do, again 
and again, till there, is no such thing as widowdom in 
the world. She had two nice little apartments, but 
not much to speak of in the way of furniture. I 
confess to a twinge or two, after the mischief was 
done ; but Sir Christopher "Wren could not "have re- 
stored the structure, so I concluded to " sin no more," 
took the hoe " trail arms," and returned penitent. 

You read History ? Oh, of course ! but I don't 
mean Gibbon, or Hume or Bancroft ; nothing bound 
in calf or Turkey, that one reads between naps, 
lying along sofas ; that reviewers take as texts for 
their learning, and every body grows wise over. Oh, 
no ! But such history as you dig out with a hoe, 
throw out with a shovel, pry out with a lever, cut 
out with an axe, watch for in the woods, or climb 
after in the mountains. Loose leaves of great, un- 
bound volumes, lying about this earth ; sometimes 
packed away, and sometimes fluttering in the wind ; 
volumes bearing the imprint of the Almighty ; leaves 
damp from the press of Creation ; lithographs older 
than the rock of Plymouth ; paintings newer than 
June roses. 



52 JANUARY AND JUNE. 

In the burglary I have owned to, I found fragments 
of stone ; unquestionably an Armory, long ago de- 
serted, and its existence forgotten. In it were packed 
away, thousands of lunar-shaped shields, bearing evi- 
dent marks of having seen much service ; armor, as 
appears from records extant, worn by warriors who 
fought and fell before Csesar thought of his " Com- 
mentaries," or the World of Caesar. Housewives 
convert this same armor to the ignoble purpose of 
polishing brass andirons and Britannia tea-urns, and 
degrade it with their christening, "Rotten Stone!" 
Think of using "Washington's sword to scrape a 
trencher ; wetting up meal for chickens in Marmion's 
helmet, or covering a coop with the shield of Achilles ! 
And what better is this robbing and desecrating the 
Westminster of some nation, not nameless because 
we think so, and bearing away the relics of older 
warriors, and who knows but better, to replenish * the 
stock in trade' of kitchens and coal-holes? " To 
what base uses may we come at last !" 

Proof-sheets of great works on Entomology and 
Conchology are scattered about here, lithographed by 
a Master : leaves whose like has not fluttered in 
morning air for centuries ; flowers that have not scented 
evening sighs since the days of Paradise ; all there 



DIGGING FOR A " SUBJECT." 53 

in the stone ; not a fibre or filament wanting, not a 
thread drawn from the delicate texture. 

The running brook by the mill was making His- 
tory, don't you think ? — when it left its old channel, 
dim, dumb and dusty, and meandered a new artery 
in the bosom of Earth. It is making History, when 
rounding and polishing the pebbles, those chronome- 
ters of the hours since its journey and carol began. 
It is revising History, when it sweeps away the vete- 
ran " witnesses " of old surveys, that marked the 
boundaries of battle-fields and the metes of kingdoms. 
It is restoring History, when it clears away the sand 
from rock bearing the legible foot-prints of a race 
whose legendary form and fame had faded from the 
lidless eye of Time — 

" Footprints that perhaps another, 
Sailing o'er Life's solemn main, 
A forlorn and ship-wreck'd brother, 
Seeing, may take heart again." 

An Oak felled, the other day, in " the heavy tim- 
ber," close by, had been making History these three 
hundred years, with its three hundred concentric 
rings ; swept, every one, with the widening compasses 
of vegetable life ; every one a symbol of a circling 
year. And they rived into rails this veteran Histo 



54 JANUARY AND JUNE. 

riaii, that commenced his work before the frozen germ 
of New-England drifted into the dead of December 
in the cup of a May Flower ! What Goth or Vandal 
migrated from the Old World to the New ? 

Dig a ditch, and you cut the untrimmed leaves of 
the Archives of the World. Climb a hill, and in 
undulating plains, and swelling heights, and deep- 
graved vales, the prospect reveals the basso relievo 
of ocean ; the sculpture of billows that died, time 
out of mind, along sands ; sands that turned to stone; 
stone that was hewn into temples; temples that mould- 
ered to dust ; dust that was flung to the winds ; winds 
that swelled the sails of the Argonauts. And the 
Sculpture ? The Sculpture is there still ! 

By the evidence of three pickaxes and a shovel, 
there is something in the earth, besides sassafras and 
silver, ginseng and gold. Now, Poetry is a great deal 
more like " Roots and Herbs " than people generally 
suppose, perhaps. Every verb has a root, and verbs 
are the great staple in epic poetry, for the action — 
that's the Verb — " the play's the tiling :" so the Iliad 
is as full of roots as a potato patch. It will not seem 
so very strange then, that Poetry has been digged 
from the earth with a shovel ; poetry that Homei 
never matched — and when one has said Homer, lie 



DIGGING FOR A " SUBJECT." 56 

has said all ; and there it stands yet, a solitary line, 
and not a couplet. A line expressed by the human 
hand ; a thought at whose utterance the tongue fal- 
tered and the pen failed ; and this was the sentiment : 
Let the gray Atlantic iced the wave of Hue Erie. 
And this was all ; but little as it was, Alexandrian 
Libraries could not contain its full expression. The 
proud Doge of Venice takes the Adriatic Sea to be 
his bride, and drops into her bosom, a rich gold ring 
in token ; but here was a greater thought waiting 
utterance. Aye, waiting utterance ! for though the 
Orator had rounded it into his periods, and the Bard 
had sung of it, they had not spoken it : it was not 
sung ! The linen from a thousand looms could not 
make a sheet broad enough for its record ; the press 
was not built that could print it ; and so its Author 
wrote it — that one line — across the broad breast of 
the " Empire State." Wrote it with spade and mat- 
tock ; blasted it out with powder ; lifted it out with 
crowbars. Then, idle rills that did nothing but 
sparkle and run, were woven into a strong, broad 
strand — a crystal tie — and flung like a ribbon, from 
Erie to the Main ! Noble " decoration" for the breast 
of New-York ! 
Ho — that Author — had carved out a River. He 



56 JANUARY AND JUNE. 

had woven its waters of the skeins of brooks. He 
had wedded the twain. He had conceived and 
uttered a thought. And there it was, in one great, 
glorious line, of a poem yet to he completed, when 
some Milton, gifted with the eloquence of the hand, 
shall spurn the cradle of some coming Age. 

Is it any less a line, that it was traced upon the 
green and golden scroll of the globe ? Any less a 
sentiment, that it was uttered with a shovel ? And 
he, Clinton ! is he not as much an author, as if, 
occupying an apartment walled in with learned non- 
sense, he had written upon " superfine satin post ?" 

Ah ! if the Babel-cleft world ever claim a com- 
mon tongue, and own a common kindred, it will be 
when the Saxon Hand shall forge a great dialect, 
needing neither lexicographer nor lexicon, "known 
and read of all men." A language that has ringing 
hammers and jarring wheels, rustling fields and har- 
vest songs, for accents. "When the sweet Ionic of the 
Golden Age shall no longer stand unrivalled, and 
man shall hail "my brother!" around the globe, 
uttered in the real, living eloquence of the Educated 
Hand. 

Digging a line of poetry, indeed ! They shall shovel 
out whole cantos from rich loam; they — every body — 



RAILWAY MAGIC. 57 

shall carve out beauty from rock ; forge ■ beati- 
tudes' in furnaces ; sow hopes in fallow fields, and 
reap joys in harvest. 



Every day the whistle, ring and jar, that grand 
trio of the Age, before which old Minstrelsy is dumb, 
come to us over Clear Lake and through the woods, 
from the M. S. and N. I. R. R. — as many initials as 
Garrick made faces — a whole Alphabet — Train. It's 
a luxury that costs nothing — the chime of a mighty 
chronometer we hear — the beat of great pendulums 
swinging through their iron arcs, East and "West, 
Toledo and Chicago, here and there ; ticking hours 
by the triplet all the day long. *VYe set the clock by 
the shrill whistle of the iron boatswain, as he pipes 
" all aboard " at La Porte, and catch ourselves looking 
in the clear sky for a cloud, when the iron-bound 
thunder rolls along the rails. 

There are a thousand things that every body sees, 
and no body thinks of ; witchery, if you will have it 
bo ; wonders, whether you will or not. No more po- 
tent Charmer ever dwelt in " the drowsy East," than 



58 JANUARY AND JUNE. 

Distance, and especially if it lias Motion for a hand- 
maid. Its enchantments are not merely those of a 
Costumer, draping mountains in azure, and " such 
like." 

A wave of its wand, and presto, magical changes 
are wrought, that would have kept that incorrigible 
Sultan — if he ivas a Sultan — a "thousand and ono 
nights " longer, with the hearing. 

Did you ever creep gingerly— should there be an- 
other "ly'' to the gingerly? — up to the deck of a 
Railway Car, when the train was moving, say twen- 
ty-five or thirty miles an hour ? And did you look 
away on, beyond the Train, where the two iron bars — 
that noblest couplet in the great epic of the time — 
were welded lovingly together, without hammer, or fur- 
nace, or fire, but just beneath the wonderful, invisible 
fingers of Distance, till they lay there, a huge V upon 
the bosom of the Prairie ? And how marvellously, 
as the Train moved on, those stubborn bars swayed 
round to a parallel ; as lightly and noiselessly as a 
brace of sunbeams, flung from a mirror swinging 
in the wanton wind, sweep round in the blue air? 
And did you "mind" — not a spike wrenched from its 
good hold, not a tie w;z-tied, not a timber splintered ? 
There must be a charm in those fingers indeed. 



RAILWAY MAGIC. 59 

There now, a brood of little haycocks, escaped 
from their native meadow, have clustered down on 
the track, right before the Engine. Heedless little 
things ! But age will bring wisdom, and one of these 
days, they'll be discreet haystacks, and not go gossip- 
ing upon Railroad tracks. Will be ! Why, they are 
getting -to be stacks already. From Lilliput to the 
other place — what a name it is to write ! — is but a 
minute, or a minute and a half. How they expand 
and " get up in the w T orld " as we near them. And 
they hear the Train, for see, they are wheeling in a 
sort of Knickerbocker waltz to the right and leftf over 
the fence and back of the barn and beyond the or- 
chard, and there they are, dignified and imperturbable 
as Haystacks ought to be. 

And those little Bushes — a capital B, if they are 
bushes — exactly in the way, whispering and all of a 
flutter, dodging up here, and nestling down there, like 
truants in the "Entry," during school hours. On 
thunders the Train, and up jump the Bushes. 

Bushes indeed ; Trees, forest trees, trees of a cen- 
tury; columns in "God's first temples." The trees 
are on the track ; growing on the track ! On the 
track indeed. By the holy rood, they are rods 



60 JANUARY AND JUNE. 

away, just where they were before Railways were 
dreamed of. 

And the worker of all this diablerie ! You can 
see the fluttering of her blue robe just there in the 
horizon. She has gone on to conjure again. It is 
Distance ! 

" Stop the Train ! Let us off! Conductor, Captain, 
Some body, Any body !" There's a village on the 
Track ; born, christened, and grown since last night. 
There's a Meeting House and a Grave Yard and a 
Block of Stores in the way ! On we plunge — dis- 
pelled at the first whistle ! The Church moves 
gravely away, as churches should. The Grave Yard, 
with its sleeping tenantry, is whisked out of sight like 
a trundle-bed ; a martin-box of a cottage scuds round 
the corner of the Meeting House ; the row of brick 
stores, very much flushed, steps six paces to the rear ; 
the cars jar on, and Distance and Motion are in the 
secret. 

Look behind you, and they are adjusting the ma- 
chinery for the next Train. Back goes the village 
that had been frightened away by the whistle, and 
the stacks and the trees grow " beautifully less," and 
so it is every day, and all day and every where, when 
Distance and Motion are partners. There's a some- 



RAILWAY MAGIC. 61 

thing on the track again ! It's a fly — it's a frog — it's 
a child — it's a man — six feet high — a P. M. — an M. 
C. On we go. "We have passed him. We have left 
him. Five feet high — four feet high — a child — a 
frog — a bug — a nothing ! What pranks Distance can 
play with man and his dignities, as the cars drive 
rattling on. Your D. D. is dwindled down ; your 
P. M. is ^aet minding ; your M. C. is microscopic 
curiosity. 

Sometimes, a little village parts the foliage of an 
" Oak Opening,' ' and peeps out to see the train go by. 
Here another skulks like a quail ; you catch a glimpse 
of it as you thunder past, and one cannot help thinking 
it will venture forth again when he is fairly out of 
sight. A third, a bold vixen, stands beside the track 
waiting for the cars. You whirl by a fourth — houses 
get down any where and very uneasy, as if just 
camped for the night, and glad to move " westward 
ho !" in the morning. 

And so they work wonders — the wonderful Two- 
all along the way, slipping hamlets, towns, marts, 
on the iron string, as if they were so many beads, in 
a necklace for a Camanche's wearing. Why, one 
meets six-rail fences every day, " staked and ridered" 
at that, plunging along like quarter horses. Strips 



62 JANUAEY AND JUKE. 

of Barrow yellow ribbon widen into broad acres of 
golden grain ; scattered skeins of silk Floss are 
webbed into running rivers ; paltry patches of green, 
are whole " sections " of red clover ; little out-dcor 
Ovens, arched Depots of two hundred feet ; the Rail- 
way itself, in the magic of Distance, seems the 
double scoring of the beautiful fields and lakes and 
towns along which those lines are drawn, that the 
Compositor may ' set them up ' in capitals, every 
one ; paid the Engine, a glossy black beetle creeping 
over the disc of the Prairies; " the transit'' of iron, 
that Astronomers never foretold. 

Lo ! there, " the breathing thought," 

The poets sang of old, 
And there " the burning word," 

No tongue had fully told, 
Until the magic hand, 

The bold conception wrought, 
In iron and in fire it stands — 

The world's embodied Thought. 

Lo ! in the panting thunders, 

Hear the echo of the Age! 
Lo ! in the globe's broad breast, behold 

The poet's noblest page ! 
For in the brace of iron bars, 

That weld two worlds in one, 
The couplet of a nobler lay 

Than bards have e'er begun! 



RAILWAY MAGIC. 63 

But there are points in sight of the dull port of 
Earth, whence your pendulums and plungings would 
be motionless as the pulse of the dead — swing as 
they might, through tremendous arcs, with a Radius 
that would curve around the woeld, they would he 
motionless still, as the caldrons that bubble amid the 
Maples in March — points, whence the leaves in the 
book of Time seem strangely displaced, and June 
and December — blank leaf and Yignette — flutter side 
by side. June and December ! A synonyme for an 
arc of one hundred and ninety millions of miles — au 
arc, that woven into a blue scarf for earth, could be 
flung over it from Ursa Major to the Southern Cross — 
could bind it in a true love-knot to the Flag-star 
of Even ; could flutter a fringe in the blaze of the 
Sun, and leave signals, aye, and badges beside, for ail 
the Engineers that ever carried a " field-book/ ' or 
sported a Theodolite. 



64 JANUARY AND JUNE. 



$jnui!] nf lain. 

Day broke in thunder, this morning. There was a 
crashing of spars and a roaring of great guns round 
the horizon ; and blasts of music drifting with the 
downy clouds ; a brood of summer showers ' came 
off ' and filled the sky ; and triumphal arches were 
heaved up on the great ' leverage ' of the Sun. It's 
the Fourth of July : the day they brought the iron 
cradle home, wherein to rock young Liberty ; the 
day when the whisper breathed beneath the shadow 
of " King's Mountain" hi the "old North State," 
went crashing in echoes round the entire world — 

Oh ! wild was that dawning ! No welcome of words, 

No star to foretell it — no warbling of birds — 

No fading of shadows — no murmur of rills — 

No flashing of pinions — no flushing of hills ; 

But the day broke in thunder o'er land and o'er sea, 

And from cloud and from shroud, rang the song of the Free. 

Oh ! that song of wrought iron no bard could have made, 

With its surging of banner and gleaming of blade; 

With its column of cloud, and its pillar of flame, 

And the clods 'neath the dead, turned the color of fame! 

Wonderfully rare were the trinkets strown about that 
cradle ; the 

Land of the vale, the viol, and the vine, 



FOURTH OF JULY. 65 

flung over the water a snowy lily from the gardens 
of France ; old Holland sent a plume, plucked from 
the bleeding "breast of her own Stork ; Woman wove 
a banner "without spot or wrinkle ;" the Forest tip- 
rooted an evergreen Pine for token ; the Mountain 
chained an Eagle, right from his rocky eyrie, for em- 
blem; Heaven cast down a handful of stars — a 
dozen and one — for the Flag that lay there ; and God 
gave ^muffled drums for hearts, and right for the 
strong arm. 

It is 'the Fourth of July all over the Farm: Four 
Blue Birds shook off their allegiance this morning ; 
two Robins declared themselves "free and independ- 
ent," of the parent nest ; two colonies of bees went 
out from the old Hives. A battalion of red-birds 
paraded in full uniform ; a Jay in a jaunty cap pro- 
nounced an Oration from a rocking spray in the Or- 
chard ; the winds and the woods played a grand 
anthem; the roses made a prayer, and "Jemmy" 
sang a song. The Bobolinks rang little bells all day ; 
Ceres marshaled her corn, rustling in silks, and gay 
with tassels ; the bearded grain was out in its gold ; 
fireworks blazed at night over the meadow; and 
isn't it the Fourth of July all over the Farm ? 

It's the Fourth of July all over the World Tho 



66 JANUARY AND JUNE. 

Gold-digger rests his " wash-bowl on his knee," and 
all at once he remembers it's the Fourth of July ; 
the orient Wanderer pauses beneath a palm, wipes 
his brow, and thinks, "Its the Fourth of July at 
home." The Mariner on his rocking deck, where 
pipes Cape Horn through frozen shrouds, or where 
his bows plough the snowy surf of northern night, 
bethinks him it's the Fourth of July — his trumpet is 
to his lip, and up main-mast and mizzen run the 
streamers, and from ' the fore ' shakes out the Bunt- 
ing ; and isn't it the Fourth of July all over the 
World ? 

'God bless our Stars for ever I" 

Thus the Angels sang sublime, 
When round God's forges fluttered fast, 

The sparks of starry Time! 
"When, they fanned them with their pinions, 

Till they kindled into day, 
And revealed Creation's bosom, 

Where the infant Eden lay. 

"God bless our stars for ever!" 

Thus they sang — the seers of old, 
When they beckoned to the Morning, 

Through the Future's misty fold. 
When they waved the wand of wonder — 

When they breathed the magic word, 
And the pulses' golden glimmer, 

Showed the waking Granite heard 



FOURTH OF JULY. 67 

"God bless our stars for ever !" 

Tis the burden of the song, 
Where the sail through hollow midnight 

Is flickering along ; 
When a ribbon of blue Heaven 

Is a-gleaming through the clouds, 
With a star or two upon it, 

For the sailor in the shrouds ! 

M God bless our stars for ever !" 

It is Liberty's refrain, 
From the snows of wild Nevada 

To the sounding woods of Maine ; 
Where the green Multnomah wander^ 

Where the Alabama rests, 
Where the Thunder shakes his turban 

Over Alleghany's crests. 

Where the mountains of New-England 

Mock Atlantic's stormy main, 
Where God's palm imprints the Prairie 

With the type of Heaven again — 
Where the mirrored morn is dawning, 

Link to Link, our Lakes along, 
And Sacramento's Golden Gate 

Swinging open to the song — 

There and there ! " Our stars for ever l" 

How it echoes ! How it thrills 1 
Blot that banner ? Why, they bore it 

When no sunset bathed the hills. 
Now over Bunker see it billow, 

Now at Bennington it waves, 
Ticonderoga swells beneath, 

And Saratoga's graves ! 



68 JANUARY AND JUNE. 

Oh ! long ago at Lexington, 
And above those minute-men, 

The " Old Thirteen " were blazing bright- 
There were only thirteen then! 

God's own stars are gleaming through it — 
Stars not woven in its thread ; 

Unfurl it, and that flag will glitter 
With the Heaven overhead. 

Oh! it waved above the Pilgrims, 

On the pinions of the prayer; 
Oh I it billowed o'er the battle, 

On the surges of the air; 
Oh ! the stars have risen in it, 

Till the Eagle waits the Sun, 
And Freedom from her mountain watch 

Has counted "Thirty-one." 

When the weary Years are halting, 

In the mighty march of Time, 
* And no New ones throng the threshold 

Of its corridors sublime ; 
When the clarion call, "close upP 

Rings along the line no more, 
Then adieu, thou blessed Banner, 

Then adieu, and not before i 



IT RAINS. 69 



" One day with another, they are pretty much 

alike.' ' It's a — no such thing, if every body a'most 

, does say it. This Every-body's a iWbody, and has 

just such an idea of days, as Wordsworth's man had 

of Primroses : 

"A Primrose by the river's brim, 

A yellow Primrose was to him, 

And it was nothing more." 

So a day to this "E very-body," is something hot or 
dry, or wet or cold, or something else, but " nothing 
more." 

Of all days, give me rainy ones for memory and 
meditation. They some how soften the mental sur- 
face, trampled and trodden down by many-footed 
interest, and let the buried germs of the past, and 
the half-forgotten, up through the parched and indu- 
rated soil — germs bursting into the beauty of the 
days that are no more — flowers of the heart, that 
though it be a rock, cling around its clefts, and deck 
its rude and roughened breast, with a brighter 
" order " than ever glittered on the bosom of bravery 

If the dear departed ever appear to us, it is when 



70 JANUARY AND JUNE. 

the sky is overcast, dimly through the mist of rain 
and tears. 

If the wondrous mirage of the mind ever brings to 
view the shores of the distant past, it is when the 
cloud is overhead ; just as we sometimes see the sun- 
shine on the swelling hills ahroad, while the veil of 
rain and shadow envelopes us where we stand. 

If the footfalls of those who have gone before, 

" To that unseen and silent shore," 

are ever heard by the listening heart, it is when they 
are so blended with the pattering of the rain, we 
cannot tell one from the other. 

The Singer of the Welsh Mountains makes the 
Waldenses bless God "for the strength of the hills," 
and why may not we, in humble prose, bid the beati- 
tude of Memory rest upon the Rain ? The Rain that 
brightens the past and revives its withered and with- 
ering flowers. 

But alas! for it, the warmest, softest, sweetest 
Rain— e'en the Rain that Mercy is likened to— can- 
not restore to life those who have obeyed the hallow- 
ing touch of time, and are " dust to dust." 

Beaumont and Fletcher told it truly when they 
bade the mourner, 



IT RAINS. 71 

' Yfeep no more, lady, weep no more, 

Thy sorrow is in vain ; 
For violets pluek'd, the sweetest showers 

"Will ne'er make grow again." 

The other day we were favored with a well-be- 
haved rain, blest with an abundance of gentleness, 
and a disposition sweet as June. 

It was none of your dashing, roaring sort of rains, 
that strangle the gutters, splash against the windows, 
and take one's breath away with whole pailsfull of 
water at once. 

It was none of your cold, sleety, freezing rains, that 
come down point first, like an avalanche of cambric 
needles ; nor yet, a blustering, whirling shower that 
sweeps up before you in sheets, with the roll of thun- 
der between, that makes you think of banners in a 
battle. Neither was it one of those old-fashioned 
" steady" rains, that begin to get ready in the morn- 
ing, with the wind " a swooning over hollow grounds," 
mist all the forenoon, drip, drip, all the afternoon, and 
set in to a regular rattling, pouring rain, that rains you 
to sleep — that you hear when away in the middle of 
your dream — that rains when you wake up — that 
keeps raining, till you begin to think of old Cove- 
nants, and bless yourself, as you turn over, that the 



72 JANUARY AND JUNE. 

seal of the rainbow has not faded from the dark 
scroll of the storm. 

No, it was none of these, but just a whole "brood of 
showerettes — little showers — that came one after 
another, out of the clouds, every other one a sun- 
shi?ie, as if to see how Earth would be pleased 
with them. 

Just the rain that sets the flowers in the garden to 

dancing and courtseying and nodding — just the rain to 

render the poet's hue no fancy, 

"Blinded alike from sunshine and from rain, 
As though a rose should shut, and be a bud again." 

It Rains ! But don't imagine for a minute that it 
always does the same thing when it rains. As em- 
phatic little girls say, under their breath, * it n'Aever, 
n'Aever does.' There's the rain impromptu, the rain 
progressive, the rain premeditated, and the rain with a 
" to be continued," the oblique, the perpendicular, the 
driving, the dripping, and the sheet rain; and no 
body can tell how many more if he tries. 

There's your dull, drizzling, dreamy rain, that 
dampens the day and the spirits, and makes one re- 
member old sunsets, old " flames," and old friends ; 
and there's your right bright, merry living showei, 
that comes dancing down in sunshine, or moon- 



IT RAINS. 73 

shine, or any time, all the same. Here is one that 
comes creeping along stealthily, first a haze, then a 
mist, then a wet blanket, then one drop, then two, 
and " so on," as Japhet's Apothecary — ivas it Ja- 
phet's ? — was always saying. But here's one — a 
clear sky a moment ago, but all at once a cloud — a 
cloud with an Engine in it ; and all at once a 
shower, that drops exactly down; then intermits, 
then down again ; and the cloud, instead of hanging 
about like a smuggler, goes right on, and there it is, 
' doing the same by the Corn, that it did, a minute ago, 
by the Clover. That's a " Summer Cloud ;" that's 
what Shakspeare meant, I guess, by the " o'ercoming " 
cloud he told of. At all events, the interpretation 
makes it mean something, which is more than can 
be said of all expositions, either of Shakspeare or 
Isaiah. Summer Clouds are busy creatures. Autumn 
Clouds are lazy and sullen ; while those of Winter 
go hurrying about, ragged as beggars, but your June- 
born cloud is "no such person." It's rounded and 
downy ; like Charity ; and shifts its apparel every 
five minutes all day long. It "lets go" a clearly 
defined shadow over grain, forest, or meadow, but it 
" drags anchor," and on it goes with its shadow, over 
the tops of the corn, and the flukes do not rumple a 



74 JANUARY AND JUNE. 

tassel ! Show me any but a Summer Cloud, that 
trails its Daguerreotype about, after that fashion. 

But the grandest of all rains is that with Scenic 
and Orchestral accompaniments ; and the very sort 
we were having hereabouts, when I wrote, " it rains." 
Two hours ago, the sky was as blue and as clear as a 
Robin's egg. An hour and a half ago, three Mac- 
beth-ish " thunder-heads" lay lurking sullenly in the 
North-west, behind the woods, and grimly growled at 
the Sunshine they meant to "put out." There they 
lay, three Golden Fleeces, worthy a trio of Jasons ; 
for the Sun was doing what he could, to burnish up 
their dingy and brazen volumes, till they looked the 
gorgeous Armorial Bearings of the Storm they were. 
A moment since, coucliant, now ram/pant) they have 
rolled up almost to the Zenith, and behind them, 
without rent or wrinkle, trails the dark robe of the 
Storm. A train, it is shaken out over the trees ; a 
sail, it curves from Heaven to Earth ; men-of-war, 
the dark hulls loom up in the offing. There's a jar- 
ring of machinery above, as stately and steadily they 
sweep up in the very teeth of the wind. There's a 
flashing of carabines athwart their dim decks. There 
are red lights like battle-lanterns swinging aloft. The 
drums beat grummer and grummer "to quarters." 



IT RAINS. 75 

They are rounding to; they are lying broadside to 
broadside ; they have opened ports ! One blast from a 
Bugle ! The great shotted guns of the gust roar at 
each other from deck to deck. The roll of the rain 
on roof and tree rattles bravely on, the while, and at 
last the battle is ended. The cloudy craft wear away, 
all sails set, and what pearly and purple signals they 
show in the setting sun ! 

A great Rainbow is bent around the world ; the 
half of the signet-ring of the Almighty, the great 
Admiral of the Fleet, in token of peace and amity 
'twixt Heaven and Earth. 

The illusion is melting away. That Bridge of 
Seven is breaking. The violet has grown dim, the 
indigo has gone, the blue has faded, the green is gray, 
the yellow is tarnished, but the red rim holds together 
still. Dim and dimmer ; it is gone, and the woods 
are all splashed with the shattered Bow. Do you re- 
member, years and years ago, how you looked and 
looked for the fragments? Haven't you done it 
within a month ? Nay, never deny it ; every body 
has, and so it's a family secret ; — Adam's Family- 
first name not recollected — and so, who cares who 
knows it ? 



76 JANUARY AND JUNE. 



There are movements — believe it — not due to Lc * 
comotives, not made by ' fast horses/ not occurring 
in ' Markets,' nor noted by Astronomers, nor caught 
by Dancers. Movements full of grace and beauty ; 
movements full of wonder and mystery ; Voyagers 
without log-books, Travellers without diaries ; move- 
ments occurring every day, every where, in the quietest 
nooks you can think of; even here on the Farm, 
carved out of the woods with an axe, sculptured with 
a plough, and lettered with a spade. 

Pine Lake, you know, is just out of sight of the 
Farm, but wouldn't be, if Summer did not lay out 
" ever so much" in fringe, about and about it, as if 
green fringe were every thing, and to be seen, nothing ! 
"Well, Pine Lake is gemmed with wee bits of Erins — 
an Archipelago of Lily leaves riding at anchor ; 
whereon creep petite snakes, of species to me un- 
known, that wind themselves up like watch-springs, 
and sun themselves to sleep. Occasionally, a silly 
tobacco-box of a Turtle assays to make a landing, but 



MOVEMENTS. 77 

there's a leaf-quake ; up tips the Emerald Isle, and 
down tumbles his turtle-ship. 

Like white chalices n:ld up by unseen hands, thou- 
sands of lilies just part the water, gently lifted on 
every wave, silently withdrawn as it subsides. Beau- 
tiful thoughts they are, rocked on the swells of a pure 
bosom. In storm and calm, by sunlight and starlight, 
always there, no tri-linked cable clanks beneath, but 
fragile stems sway softly in the water ; while brave 
old Oaks, moored by an hundred roots to solid land, 
are torn from their fastenings, and flung crashing to 
earth! 

Lilies there are, pearling the billows of our troub- 
lous humanity, that thus ride out all its storms, unrent 
and spotless — Lilies still, till, in the last cold baptism 
of death, they are buried " out of our sight.' ' They 
leave not a leaf; they make not a sign ; the waters 
are crystal as before, and next year there are lilies 
again. 

"So dies in human hearts the ttcnght of death." 

r 

The sweetest offering of humanity to Heaven is 
beauty : the beauty of form and fame. Lilies alike 
of the field and the flood! Solomon, "in all his 
glory," could not rival them, and the utterances of 



78 JANUARY AND JUNE. 

life's Master, upon the Mount, have vested them 
both with a beauty immortal as the Spring. 

Hard by the cellar-door, a Potato had fallen, no 
body knows when. Potatoes were "scarce and in 
demand ;" potatoes were " like angels' visits ;" in 
fact, potatoes were 'potatoes ; but amid the darkness 
and damp, the individual tuber in question was not 
noticed. So, and if not " so," then am/ how, it deter- 
mined to do something for itself, and, potato as it was, 
be something. So it sent out a Vine that crept here 
and there without a light — poor thing ! — looking very 
pale indeed, in the darkness. 

By and by, instead of rambling about like a truant, 
it set off all at once, and away it went along the 
damp, earthen floor ; and what was its errand, and 
had it, in very deed, a mission ? A stray beam or 
two of sunlight from the upper air had been in the 
habit, at a certain hour, of venturing down the cellar 
stairs, and struggling with the dim, and falling upon 
the floor. 

And the Vine, like a mariner, was making for 
1 the light' that God had kindled there in the dark ! 
Joy go wi*b thee, pale Vine, on thy journey. Engi- 
neers cannot direct thy route ; Contractors cannot 
build a v/ay for thee. With a passport from the hum* 



MOVEMENTS. 79 

blest deputy of the Universal Life, thou canst go 

around the world alone ! 

On it went, and yesterday it reached its destination, 

and with a raveled leaf of lightest green, it lies there 

beneath the sunbeam, the tint of a freer, fuller life in 

°,very fibre. 

Like some low-born maiden in the " Morning Land," 

where dwell the worshippers of the Sun, this Vine has 

crept night after night, without a day between, to the 
place it had heard of afar off, where the Shah for a 
while held audience. Arrived, it unfolds its gift, 
though 'tis of the humblest, and lying upon the earth, 
timidly lifts the border of his gorgeous robe, and 
covers its bended head, as if it had faltered, "Z too 
am thy subject. Be thou my protector, as thou art 
my king." So said the Vine to the great Prince of 
Morning. But he withdrew his robe, and went on in 
his chariot. He flushed the red Missouri with a deeper 
glow ; and he gilded again the sands of the Sacra- 
mento ; and he drove on, like Neptune, over the calm 
Pacific ; and the porcelain towers of China were 
a-blaze at his coming. He tarried among the palms, 
and he pressed the lips of the daughters of Circassia, 
and he kindled the cold bosoms of the beauties of the 
North, and he lingered in dalliance with the ivory 



8C JANUARY AND .TUNE. 

fingered women of Europe ; and he did not forget 
the Vine, that waited for him the while in the cellar 
of the old homestead. But this morning, the chariot 
and horses of Phoebus waited without, while he de- 
scended the damp and slippery steps, and left a smile 
for the Vine that will last it all day and all night, 
and until he comes again in his glory. 

" Movements" indeed !, Why, the Farm is full of 
them. The leaves of the Silver Poplar, in breaths 
of air the faintest, go all day like little French 
clocks, with their " green and silver — silver-green ; 
green and silver — silver-green," while the tall Elm 
swings slowly in the upper air, like the pendulums of 
old narrow- waisted, moon-faced clocks, wound up with 
a string, that used to " tick behind the door," from 
gray Grandam's infancy, to the shrill bell of the latest 
hour that sailed from the port of Time. 

The Strawberry is a great rover — in fact, the 
" Red Rover" of the vegetable kingdom. It minds 
no more about fences than an English Hunter ; never 
stops for bars or gates, but wanders about all over the 
Farm as it wills ; it never tells where it will be to- 
morrow or next year, never leaves a line, and one is 
never sure he will have it Thursday because he pos- 
sessed it Wednesday. As much a migratory creature 



MOVEMENTS 81 

is the Strawberry as the Bird, that, all day long, fans 
the cold, thin atmosphere, from Southern "Whiter into 
Northern Spring — from Lake to Lagoon, from Cham- 
plain to the Chesapeake. A great Pendulum is that 
Bird too, swinging twice a year over the Farm, 
with the flowers or the frosts glittering beneath and 
behind it. 

The Wheat, that has been "waving, and nodding, 
and rustling, for many a day, they are rocking to sleep 
in cradles of ringers, and to-night will conclude the 
Lullaby of the Harvest. And the Y/heat on its way 
down, meets the Corn and the Grass going up, and 
the Silk rising; and the Bees, murmuring along to 
the woods and the clover, meet the Cows coming 
home to the milking, and the Robins en route for the 
cherries ; the pears and the apples are coming on ; 
the setting Bantams and Cochin Chinas are coming 
off; the milk is running over the pails ; the share is 
running under the fallow ; the Hops running round 
and roun \ 

The Koses, red, white, and variegated, have been 
going down, hy the leaf, one after another, until now 
" the last rose of summer" is "left blooming alone." 
WTio would not grieve more to have them die, were 
not Roses among the few things of earth that are fra« 



82 JANUARY AND JUNE. 

grant when dead? " Brindle," and "Red," and 
" old Mooly" have come in ; the Honeysuckle and 
the Lilies have come out ; and so it goes, and so 
they all go. 

Domesticated, and always in sight of the house, are 
trees of about five-and-twenty different characters, 
colors, and capabilities ; and queerly do they act — 
some of them — in the down-coming rain, as it 
twinkles on the little buds, clatters on the Plantains, 
patters on the Lilac bushes, flutters on the Peaches. 
The Butternut just quivers and quakes ; the Lilac 
dodges this way and that, and the Roses fairly dance 
up and down. The Peaches, all of a flutter, seem 
just ready to fly ; the chuckle-headed Apple-trees 
keep nodding like " silent members ;" the Mulberry 
swing3 lazily to and fro, as if it didn't mind it much ; 
while the heaped-up G-rape Vine shakes itself like a 
thorough-bred Newfoundland, and the Oak just stands 
straight in the shower, and takes it as Oaks should. 
Down below, the White Clover twinkles, twinkles, like 
very dim stars very far off, and the little Mosses do 
nothing but look as green as they can. The Wheat 
bows and jostles, and turns this way and that, and 
breaks its neck — some of it — and betrays symptoms 
of a regular stampede, while the knightly Corn keeps 



MOVEMENTS. 83 

" saluting" the shower with its broad, green blades : 
and so they "go through the motions" in all wea- 
thers ; and so, as Market Reporters have it, " we have 
movements to note." 

A tree down in the corner — know it well enough 
" by sight" — stands shivering frorr Ttorning till night ; 
it is big enough to be braver ; a pert little Quince by 
the south window is for ever " a nod, nod, nodding," 
no matter what is said, or who says it ; while a 
Sweet Brier, that has snugged up to the north wall, 
amuses itself with ' Spiritual Rappings' upon the 
window-sill ; a Maple, a little way off, rolls up in the 
wind its great billows of green, and looks, sometimes, 
as if it would toss itself into Heaven, and its glorious 
verdure be blent with the Blue of the Blest. 

A great Tree, its one column rising solemnly out 
of the earth, and its branches flung up into the sky, 
is a noble piece of architecture, and none but God 
can build it. Such a tree stands on the other side of 
the road, and so, as I have said, do its great swells of 
foliage roll up in the blast. And when, sometimes, 
Noon, like a worn warrior in armor of gold, lies 
breathless upon the plain, there is a rustle still, a 
song and a cool breath still, amid its mighty recesses 
of shade. When they " lay the axe at its root," and 



84 JANUARY AND JUNE. 

it shivers to its green coronal with the strokes, and 
it comes down with the rushing of a great banner, 
and the roaring of a great gun, one would almost 
think the blue air must retain the form that had 
filled it so beautifully and long ; that its semblance 
in aerial outline should not pass for ever away. But 
when I think it is not so, 

" a feeling of sadness comes o'er me, 

That my soul cannot resist ; 

"A feeling of sadness and longing 

That is not akin to pain, 
But resembles sorrow only 

As the mist resembles the rain." 



Don't be alarmed, unless you are a mouse, or a 
chicken, or some such tit-bit. I've turned Owl ; — 
Minerva's bird — I've made a descent upon the Heu- 
rocst ; I've pounced upon an idea, such as it is ; an 
idea hi feathers. 

A Hen is a foolish thing — hasn't a grain of sense, 
for that's a grain not found in gizzards. Her head is 
pierced exactly through the middle for a couple of 



HENDOM. 85 

eyes, and a small head at that, so there is no room 
for sense. As for the eyes, they must be excellent 
optical instruments, for she can discover " a hawk" 
where we couldn't distinguish it from a " handsaw ;" 
hut then they have about the expression of a brace of 
brass buttons at a shilling a gross. There isn't much 
poetry about Hens ; there isn't much romance in Hen- 
dom. Hens are speckled, grizzled, and gray ; white, 
copper-colored, and blue — all blue in " the Jerseys ;" 
there are the old-fashioned hens and the Bantams ; 
those heavenly hens, the Shanghais and Cochin 
Chinas ; hens with no tails, short tails, and pretty 
much all tails ; hens in feathered pantaloons — whew ! 
and June too ! — and hens with Camwood-colored 
pantalettes— the very kind for the table ; hens with 
Hussar-caps ; hens with huge back-combs, like our 
Grandmothers; hens with very delicate side-combs, 
like our Sweethearts. 

The grand " Movement" in feminine humanity is 
by no means endemic, inasmuch as ' strong-minded' 
hens are far from being anomalies now-a-days. They 
quarrel, and crow, and act, as near as possible, like 
veritable Chanticleers ; shouldn't be surprised to see 
a Bantam out in Bloomer any morning ; some of them 
wear spurs already. Progressive Hens ! Apropos 



86 JANUARY AND JUNE. 

of spurs ; 1 have an interest in, that is, am part owner 
of — sole estate, real and personal — a magnificent 
Cochin China Cock. He is not knighted yet; he 
wants the spurs ; but he'll make a sensation when he 
gets them, and sign himself " F. M." — Field-Marshal 
the Cochin China, with as good a grace, and as much 
of it withal, as the " Iron Duke/' He has a voice 
already that would he music to Thor, the Saxon 
Thunderer ; and he crows, but " not an ultra" crow ; 
in fact, a "judicious, discriminating" crow, when 
there are no veteran rivals of the old school in the 
field. Never mind ; he is rehearsing for " sharp 
practice" one of those days. 

Socrates- — we read — requested, among the last 
things, that a Cock might be sacrificed to Esculapius — 
"confirmation strong" that it was no Cochin China; 
else, ivhat a sacrifice ! 

Hens are Vike folks ; look, act, and talk like folks — 
that is, a great many folks — that you and I know. 
There's one now, with precisely two feathers in her 
tail, by actual inventory ; and the two stick directly 
up, like a couple of oars in a fishing smack. She's a 
fussy little body, and goes clucking around with one 
chicken about the size of a wren, quite unconscious 
of the figure she cuts, and the ridicule she provokes, 



HENDOM. 87 

wherever she goes. Who doesn't know some body as 
like her " as two peas ?" She's every where, in every 
thing ; has " a word in season," and out, and for that 
matter the ' outs' have it. Nothing going on, that 
she isn't there, and hasn't something to say;, with her 
short steps hut a great many of them. Only glance 
at that wonderful chicken of hers, and she's all of 
a clutter; ruffles her feathers, and looks — so she 
thinks — very formidable. She is too tough to eat, or 
she would have been guillotined long ago. 

That gray individual is older than " Mack," and 
he's a dozen ; the Meg Merrilies of the Roost. Quite 
a Malte Brun is she in her way, for what she does not 
know about the Geography of Corn-cribs, Cornfields, 
Cherry trees, Melon patches, and rare picking gene- 
rally, isn't worth knowing. Posted in all that per- 
tains to nestling, scratching, and roosting places, she 
unites in her venerable self the Mrs. Partington and 
the Paul Pry of Hendom. Not a brood of chickens 
does some more favored sister lead triumphantly off, 
but she sets up an apology for a cluck, spreads her 
tail, puts on an extra frill, and, looking as matronly as 
possible — who would think it ? — lays claim to half 
the chickens — the only thing, by the by, she can lay. 
Having outlived her youthful weaknesses, she has 



88 JANUARY AND JUNE. 

utterly forgotten she ever was a pullet, and is very 
severe upon every little indiscretion among the poul- 
try. Her age is her protection, and she makes the 
most of her privilege, grows garrulous precisely as she 
grows foolish, and is as captious and consequential as 
an old Dowager. 

Longer Biographies of " bipeds without feathers," 
have been manufactured cut of less material than the 
adventures of this venerable Partlet would supply. 
In her youth, an accident, or, to be briefer, an axe, 
deprived her of her toes ; and then, just to think of 
it ! what perils by club and stone, and mop and 
broom, she has encountered ; what imminent danger 
from hungry hawks she has escaped ; what weasels 
have poached her innocent eggs ! Nearly abducted 
by Reynard ; quite looked out of countenance by an 
Owl ; half frozen " that cold winter ;" almost drowned 
in the wash-tub ; and what a family she has reared 
in her day, that were all " well to do," until they 
were ivell done. "What themes for pathos and patriot- 
ism ; what opportunities for ode and episode would 
these incidents furnish ! 

It rains this morning, and half a score of cocks in 
red and yellow uniform, stand in the corners of the 
fences, under the wagon, or the lee of an old plough, 



HENDOM. 8^ 

heads drawn into feather mufflers, and looking, with 
their drenched and drooping plumes, like Militia Cap- 
tains on parade day, when Barometers and water are 
reported " falling." There is not a crow of defiance, 
or triumph, or complacence ; not a call— you have 
heard it, and I cannot describe it, unless it is like a 
laugh in a muff— to the 'women folks/ at the dis- 
covery of some rare delicacy, real or imaginary, in- 
the freshly-raked earth; imaginary, for it must he 
confessed they are " gay deceivers," some of them, 
and call very affectionately, when they find no corn. 

Observation, both of Cocks and Capitalists, enables 
me to say, that any " Rooster," having from three 
pecks to one and a half bushels of some current grain 
at command, can come into this neighborhood, and 
among eighty or so (counting chickens) of the feathered 
race, be the courted, caressed, and clucked about, of 
the whole roost ; but — an awkward invention is 
1 but,' for an awkward necessity — let him take care 
of his com. 

Small lawyers very Johnsonian ; red-visaged Boni- 
faces very Boswellian ; officers of the Army all Bri- 
gadiers ; " Martinets" of the Navy very peremptory ; 
little Quakeresses very modest ; mothers very bustling, 
and gossips very busy — all are represented among 



90 JANUARY AND JUNE. 

that parti-colored, cackling, clucking, crowing jfowd 
of Locomotive Mills for the grinding of all sorts of 
produce, and called " for short" Hens. 

These "small deer" are vocal but not musical, 
unless one has an ear for sawing and filing. Their 
language is too rich in consonants — too decidedly 
Saxon ; and because, I suppose, no William the Con- 
queror ever broke shell, and thus made his debut 
into breathdom, it is without the softening accents of 
the Norman-French. Harsh as it is, however, no one 
can deny to it expressiveness, and, sometimes, elo- 
quence : the great cry when an egg is laid is as good 
as an announcement in the London Times, thus : 
" Mrs. Speckled, of an Egg." The alarm, when a 
wing somewhat too broad sweeps over the Farm- Yard, 
is as significant as the old Saxon Tocsin. The call 
of something " found," is quite as intelligible as the 
Town Crier with his bell. The defiant voice of the 
Cock is a challenge in honest vernacular, and the 
triumphant crow is a " hurrah" in plain English. 
The Mother's incessant 'cluck, clucking/ with her 
family, is veritable " baby-talk," while her tones, 
gathering the callow wanderers together, are as full 
of love as an old Ballad. And the notes of the 
chickens ! There is not a rural sound softer and 



CHICKEN PIE. 91 

sweeter than the home-note of the little creatures, 
when nestled at night beneath the Mother's brooding 
wing. "Were it translated into the language of " Par- 
adise Lost" — that subdued " yeep, eep, eep " — it 
would be, beyond a doubt, the word defined by some 
"Webster yet unborn, " perfect happiness at home, and 
home once more !" 



GfeUJttn fit*. 

The transition from chickens on the perch to chick- 
ens in the pie, seems more natural and easy according 
to "Whateley and Newman than it is according to 
Poultry. I abominate Chicken-pies as edibles, but, 
be assured, from no " fellow feeling." I love to see 
them, to think of them, but not to eat them. I 
would as soon make a meal of reminiscences, or call 
for a Metaphor, " rare done," at dinner. They are 
suggestive ; they are melancholy — Chicken-pies are ; 
they bring to mind days that went down long ago 
at home ; the capacious and burnished tin pan, 
wherein " mother " — your mother and mine — used to 
bake them aforetime; the old family table, round 



92 JANUARY AND JUNE. 

which we five, and no more, used to gather, Christ- 
mas Days and Thanksgivings ; when to hold the lan- 
tern at night, while some body robbed the hen-roost, 
was an era ; when we used to run away before they 
were beheaded, because we couldn't ' bear to see it ;' 
when we just wanted to hold one a minute, ' to see 
how it would seem ;' when a wing was a treasure, 
and we ' played ' it was a bird, and ' poored' it, and 
offered it crumbs of bread every day, and wrapped it 
up hi an apron, and hid it in the trundle-bed ; when 
we — you and I — grasped the ' icish-hone ' and wished, 
and both pulled, and both held a fragment ; but 
yours was the larger, so you had your wish, as they 
all told us. Don't you remember? Can't you see 
it all ? Ah ! there's more beneath that swelling 
crust than every body dreams of, and the chickens are 
a small item indeed. 

That mnemonic pie " minds " me, too, of the 
days when to find a Hen's nest was to have an 
ecstacy ; the more eggs, the more ecstacy. Many 
a man — perhaps you have — has found name and 
fame since then, and it never quickened a pulse ! 
How the chip hat was doffed, preparatory to " the 
removal of the deposites," and the eggs transferred 
thereto ; and no Roman, returning' from flushed fields 



CHICKEN PIE. 93 

of conquest, felt half so grand as ycu siid I, when we 
counted the treasures, one by one, into Mother's 
checked apron, and had a vision of a little pie a-piece, 
baked upon ' our scalloped tins.' 

Sometimes, after a driving rain, you rer&ember, we 
used to find a downy chick, drenched with water, in 
articulo mortis. The little handled basket, stained 
with strawberries summers before, was nicely lined 
with cotton- wool, and the gasping helplessness nestled 
therein, and the basket, with its precious contents, 
covered with a cloth, was set in a corner near the 
kitchen fire, to keep it warm. And what times we 
had, wetting up meal, and feeding, and watching, and 
'tending ! How many times we peeped under the 
cloth, just to see, as we said, ' how it is now.' 
Fierce altercation — sorry to say it — about the owner- 
ship of the tenant in the basket, would arise, and the 
titles tried by the usual test of who saw it first, who 
got to it first, who put it in the basket, whose hen 
laid the egg, or whose hen hatched it ; and maybe, 
the while, the chicken would be dying. The right of 
possession occurs simultaneously to both ; a plunge : s 
made for the basket ; the cloth falls off in the melee, 
and the chicken lies there, among the white wool — 
dead! War is turned to weeping. I made a shingle 



94 



JANUARY AND JUNE. 



coffin; you dug a grave. The chicken was borne 
' out beneath the apple-tree, and we buried it there, 
and sang, as well as we could, 

"Hark! from the tombs a doleful sound." 

That done, you remember one of us wrote upon the 

fragment of a slate, ' Sacred to the memory of ' 

and there was a difficulty ; it had no name. But this 
was disposed of, and we wrote on — ' a little Biddy, 
drowned to death, July 10th, 18- — I've forgotten the 
year ; and then drew over the top, a distant resem- 
blance of a weeping willow, very drooping and sad, 
and set it up at the head of the grave. That after- 
noon there was a shower, and at night, when we 
went out to see the little grave again, the inscription 
was gone ; the drops of rain had washed it all away ! 
Strange, we never thought of it then, but we have 
since : slate, marble, or brass ; pencil, graver, or gild- 
ing, it is all the same. The world weeps away its 
griefs, and with those griefs, the memory of the wept. 
Since then, we have both stood by other graves, 
times too many, doubtless with deeper, but never with 
truer sorrowing, than w r hen, beneath the old apple- 
tree, we paid our childish tribute to the dead Nest- 
ling. 



HAPPINESS "AT COST." 95 



fsppiJUiJjj "at tat/' 

This morning, a wagon, laden with wheat, went 
by, going to town ; nothing strange in that, certainly. 
And a man driving the team, and a woman perched 
on the load beside him, and a child throned in the 
woman's lap ; nothing strange in that, either. And 
it required no particular shrewdness to determine 
that the woman was the property- — "personal ," of 
course — of the man, and that the black-eyed, round- 
faced child was the property of both of them. 

So much I saw ; so much, I suppose, every body 
saw, who looked. It is a fair inference that the wife 
was going in to help her husband ' trade out' a por- 
tion of the proceeds of the wheat, the product of so 
much labor and so many sunshines and rains. 

The pair were somewhere this side — a fine point 
of observation, isn't it ? — this side of forty, and it is 
presumptive, if blessed like their neighbors, they left 
two or three children at home, ' to keep house' while 
they came to town — perhaps two girls and a boy, or, 
as it is immaterial to us, two boys and a girl. 

Well, I followed the pair, in thought, until the 



9(5 JANUARY AND JUNE. 

wheat was sold, the money paid, and then fur the 
trade. The baby was shifted from shoulder to shoul- 
der, or set down upon the floor, to run cff into mis- 
chief like a sparkling globule of quicksilver on a 
marble table, while calicoes were priced, sugar and 
tea tasted, and plates " rung." The good wife looks 
askance at a large mirror that would be just the 
thing for the best room, and the roll of carpeting of 
most becoming pattern ; but it won't do ; they must 
wait till next year. Ah ! there is music in those 
next years that Orchestras cannot make ! 

And so they look, and price, and purchase the win- 
ter supplies, the husband the while eying the little 
roll of bank-notes, " growing small by degrees and 
beautifully less." Then comes an ' aside' confer- 
ence, particularly confidential. She takes him affec- 
tionately by the button, and looks up in his face — she 
has fine eyes by the by — with an expression eloquent 
of " do, now ; it will please them so." And what do 
you suppose they talk of ? Toys for the children ; 
John wanted a drum, and Jane a doll, and Jenny a 
little book all pictures, "just like Susan so-and-so's.'' 
The father looks " nonsense ;" but he feels in his 
pocket for the required silver, and the mother, having 
gained the point, hastens away, baby and all, for the 



AERIAL REHEARSAL. 97 

toys. There acts the mother — she had half promised, 
not all, that she would bring them something, and 
she is happy all the way home, not fur the bargains 
she made, but for the pleasant surprises in those three 
brown parcels. And you ought to have been there, 
when they got home ; when the drum, and the doll, 
and the book were produced — and thumped, and 
cradled, and thumbed — wasrCt it a great house ! 

Happiness is so cheap, what a wonder there is not 
more of it in the world ! 



%ttn\ *gt\ntnl. 

Last night, the moon, with a new coat of silver, 
rode high in the west, while in the north and north- 
east, pure, pearly white overlaid the blue — then deep- 
ened to an orange — then turned to a crimson, till it 
looked like the pillar of fire in the wilderness, or a 
Daguerreotype of sunset. 

Anon it changed ; the crimson was pink ; the blue, 
a blush ; and the pearl, a delicate green. 

"What they were doing up aloft, is more than I 
know ; whether rehearsing sunset or sunrise, ' shifting 



98 JANUARY AND JUNE. 

scenes' for the never-before-performed drama ^ 
morrow,' or spreading out rainbows on the upper 
decks to dry, is to me a mystery. 

Now and then, white, silvery-looking spars were 
lifted up from the northern horizon, and converged in 
the zenith ; and it occurred to me, that, may be, they 
were repairing this great blue tent we live under, and 
that I saw the bare spars and the red linings of the 
curtains that were thrown up, to keep them out of the 
way of the aerial craftsmen. 

And then again, as it crimsoned, and pearled, and 
clouded so exquisitely, I fancied it might be Heaven's 
grand pattern for sea-shells to tint by, discovered at 
last. 

And once more, ere I had quite made up my mind 
on this conjecture, such a beam, nay, cloud of red 
light streamed out into the night, and over the stars, 
one would be sure it must come from Heaven's painted 
window, and that some body — perhaps seme body we 
once knew and loved, and love still — was passing to 
and fro, giving us, without the walls, a glimpse cr two 
of the glory within. 

As I kept looking, I kept fancying, and who knew 
that it might not be the evening of some forgotten 
and long-past yesterday, thus ' revisiting the glimpses 



AERIAL REHEARSAL. 99 

of the moon' — one that you and I loved, and have 
sighed for, more than we would care to tell, and 
. would give a dozen to-morrows to see again. 

As I looked, it changed, and the whole heaven 
from far below the Dipper to the Zenith, was a flut- 
ter. Through the silver lace-work shone the stars, 
and the blue, and the galaxy itself. What could it 
be, but the dim scarfs of the loved and lost, thus 
waved in token of remembrance to the earth beneath ? 
And why not ? How beautiful and how calm lay 
that earth beneath the great Argus sky ! The eyes 
of hundreds were turned towards Heaven, that during 
the broad and glaring day forget there is a Heaven, 
and a treasure in it. They remembered it then, and 
were remembered in turn. Ah ! if our fancies were 
only lialf true ! 

The books call it Aurora Borealis — what do we 
care for the books ? — and the philosophers declare it 
is electrical in its origm ; a fig for the philosophers ! 
The books of memory and the human heart were 
printed and collated before that conceited old German 
they tell of, ever cut a type ; and as for philosophy, 
there is more wisdom in a thought thus tinted with a 
ray shining through last night from yesterday, than 



100 JANUARY AND JUKE. 

Seneca, or any body this side of Solomon, ever 
thought of 

But while I gazed and mused, the vision vanished, 
the window was curtained, the rehearsal over, the 
sea-shells tang] it their lessen, the tent ' as good as 
new,' the last scene shifted, and the old yesterday 
faded out. 



^amtstic tijftf-jf-Kxtmtst. 

Something- very mysterious over to Charles', yes- 
terday. All the children belonging to all the neigh- 
bors were cautioned not to ' come a-near,' and Rush 
went dashing off to town, like a king's courier, and 
there was much talk among the feminines, that grew 
beautifully inaudible at my approach. 

"Whatever it was, or would be, it created a strange 
commotion in all the region round about. At our 
house, bureau-drawers tumbled out their treasures of 
flannels and linens; closets and upper shelves were 
ransacked for saffron and catnip ; time-tinted papers 
of pink and senna were disturbed, amid barbless fish- 
hooks, broken awls, and rusty gimlets. 



DOMESTIC ENCHANTMENT. 101 

What could it all mean ? Three women in secret 
conclave, stood sentry at the kitchen-door. "Why did 
they look at me ? What had I to do with it, or 
them, or any thing ? 

An exodus was effected; once in the fields, I 
breathed freer, and who wonders ? 

Mercy on the house that never had a baby in it ! 
Don't you remember when you were * little,' how you 
sighed for a playfellow, and how, some bright morn- 
ing, they took you mysteriously and smilingly by the 
hand, and led you into a darkened room, with a gleam 
of white drapery in it ; and how you trembled in 
your little shoes as you stood there, every thing was so 
dim, and solemn, and whispered; and how Aunt 
Green, or Brown, or some body, took out, exactly from 
the midst of the drapery, a nice little bundle, bor- 
dered about with ribbon, and you discovered a face 
of the littlest, and eyes of the«bluest, and fingers of 
the tiniest, and you were enjoined to kiss it, and love it, 
and c be good' to it, for ever and ever ? And you asked 
all in a breath, whence it came, and when it came, 
and who brought it, and whose it was, and were told, 
1 from Heaven — last night — an Angel — yours !' How 
you wished you had been awake, to see that beautiful 
Angel with her long white wings ! And did she go 



102 JANUARY AND JUNE. 

'right away/ and would she come again and bring 
another ? 

Perhaps they averred that the precious little crea- 
ture was found, like a young quail, hidden beneath 
some marvellous leaf. Many a time, whether you 
will own it or not, now you have grown old and wise, 
you have peeped beneath the plantains and the bur- 
docks, in the secret hope of finding another little 
Moses, ready to smile, that you might have all to 
yourself. Many a time, whether you will own it or 
not, you watched some parting in the summer cloud, 
and thought you saw a wing and an angel ; and then, 
it wasn't a wing, but a little cherub coming all alone, 
sailing on a little cloud all crimson and gold ; and 
then, it was just a face that looked through, and was 
withdrawn ; and then, you grew weary with watch- 
ing, and your eyes ached with gazing, and you fell 
asleep under the tree, and dreamed it was all true 
and more ! What wouldn't you give for one such 
dream now ? 

Just heard from Charles'. Enchantment, necro- 
mancy, sorcery, and incantation are all true — never 
doubt it ! His house is haunted ! A " charmer" has 
come into that quiet family, and the wonders she 



DOMESTIC ENCHANTMENT 103 

■works, would put Persians and East Indians to their 
trumps. 

The first thing she did was to give the wheel of 
time a tremendous whirl forward, and throw a re- 
spectable couple, if not exactly into " kingdom come," 
at least into the generation on before, and transform 
them into grandfather and grandmother in a twink- 
ling ; turn innocent young women into aunts, and 
roistering boys into uncles, before they knew it, and 
cap the climax, by making a young pair, who 
fancied, a minute ago, they had their fortunes to 
make, independent for life. And all this time, and 
doing all this, she never said a word ! 

But this Charmer wrought other wonders. She 
made an error of one in the tables of a Census-taker, 
miles away, and puzzled him sadly ; she prolonged a 
piece of delicate flannel then going through the loom, 
just three yards ; gave the spool of the ribbon- weaver 
a dozen turns more than was intended ; kept the 
weary lace-maker, in spite of herself, full two hours 
longer at her task, she wondering, the while, why she 
tarried at her toil. And so she went on with her 
witchery, further than I have time to think or pa- 
tience to tell, and yet — people profess to believe that 
the days of enchantment have passed away ! 



104 JANUARY AND JUNE. 

1 The name of this Charmer ?' inquires some "body, 
and there he has me at fault. She is nameless, lik8 
the clouds and the flowers. She came unannounced. 
She bore no letters of introduction. She presented no 
iard ; and indeed, ' saving and excepting' the wonders 
she works, she is an emphatic no body. Strange 
world, isn't it ? Strange visitors enter it, don't there ? 



There is, as every body knows, a trumpet-shaped 
little instrument, delighting in the barbarous name of 
Stethoscope, made at soma small expense of wood, 
ivory, and skill, wherewith the surgeon plays eaves- 
dropper to the ' clink of the machinery of life ; and 
there's a thought in it alike for the preacher and the 
[joet. It is sublime, indeed, to bring one's ear close 
to the heart's red brink, and list the tinkling of the 
crimson tide ; but there is something more sublime 
than this. Beneath that wave incarnadine, in every 
heart, lie pebbly thoughts in rhyme, and gems " of 
purest ray," beyond the ken of surgeon, and beyond 
his skill — the emotion half uttered in a sigh, the hope 



AN UNSCIENTIFIC CHAT ABOUT MUSIC. 105 

half written in a smile, the grief betokened in a 

tear. 

Now that sublimer something is — Poetry. " ! ?" 

— Yes, most Incredulous, Poetry — for what is it, after 

all, but the stethoscope of the soul, whereby we hear 

the music of a healthful heart, and the footfall of 

lofty thought in the hall of the spirit ? Vfhat is it 

but the thought itself, warm and living, throbbed out 

by one heart, only to find lodgment in another ? And 

what is Music, but the melodious wing that wafts and 

warms it on its mission round the world — that will 

not let it droop — that will not let it die ? 

"Auld Lang Syne" — here it is, glittering with the 
« 
dews of its native heather — sung last night in a 

hovel, sung this morning in a hall. " When shall we 
meet again ?" Within one little year how many lips 
have asked — how many knells have answered it ! 
Where pipes Cape Horn through frozen shrouds, the 
mariner hums " Sweet Home," to-night ; where 
hearths are desolate and cold, they sing " Sweet 
Home," in Heaven. With how many blended hearts, 
from Plymouth to the Prairie, " h Jndee's wild war- 
bling measures rose" last Sabbath morn — the strain 
the Covenanters sang — the tune that lingers yet along 
the banks of murmuring Ayr ! The " Star Spangled 



106 JANUARY AND JUNE. 

Banner" strong voices hymn on deck and desert, in 
bivouac and battle, where beats a heart beneath Co- 
lumbia's flag. The "Exile of Erin" will sing the 
mournful strain, while grates his pilgrim bark upon a 
foreign shore ; they'll chant " Marseilles," and sound 
the simple " Ranz des Yaches," till E evolutions are 
no more, and Alpine altars cease to kindle in the 
evening beam. " Those evening bells," and "Sweet 
Afton," and all that long array of sweet and simple 
melodies that linger round the heart, like childhood's 
dreams of heaven — whence came their breath of im- 
mortality, if not from Music, the pinion of the Song ? 
And then those sacred tunes that floated round the 
old gray walls of the village church, and haunt our 
memories yet ; St. Martin's, St. Thomas, and St. 
Mary's, immortal as the "calendar;" Old Hundred, 
Silver Street, and Mear, and sweet old Corinth — Den- 
mark, Wells, and Peterboro' — chance breaths caught 
from the choir above ! The faces of the Singers have 
changed since then. The girls are wives — the wives 
are dead. Those plaintive airs they sang around the 
open grave, bcjneath the maple's shade ! Lay your 
hand upon your heart, and tell me what is nearer to 
it than those old strains — tell me, can they die, while 
that beats on? Die till the "great congregation," 



AN UNSCIENTIFIC CHAT ABOUT MUSIC. 107 

the missing ones all gathered home, strike up the 
sleeping song anew, in " temples not built with 
hands" ? There's Tallis' Evening Hymn, the vesper 
of two hundred years ! They sing it yet — sing it as 
they sang, in twilight's hush, and charmed our youth- 
ful ears. They ! Who, and where are "they"? 
The loved — in Heaven ! Perhaps they sing it there. 
Who will not say with Christopher North, " blessed 
be the memory of old songs for ever" ? 

And — " mind the step down" — the fashionable 
" scores" of these days of science and " executions" — 
the music of the parlor and soiree, thrummed on 
pianos, twanged on guitars, drawn out from accor- 
dions — the sounds that swing scientifically from round 
to round, up and down the ladder of song — now 
swelling like a Chinese gong — now quavering in the alto 
of feline distraction — now at the height of the art, and 
now in the very Avernus of the science — what ele- 
ment of melody or of soul have these, to charm the ear, 
to reach the heart, to live for ever ? Was it Wesley 
who said the devil had most cf the good tunes, after 
all ? And what did he mean, save that out of the 
church and the drawing-room — off the carpets ; on 
the bare floors of this great caravansary, in the street, 
and the cane-brake, and the theatre, where they olat- 



108 JANVART AND JUNE. 

ter castanets, beat the banjo, and sing in disguise, 
float some of the sweetest strains that modern times 
can claim ? 

Well, there! — I have " made a clean breast of 
it" — volunteered my opinion, " that shouldn't," of the 
new school of fashionable music, and live to tell it ! 
How unfortunate— isn't it? — "but for Pity's sweet 
sake, don't pity me — that I was born a thousand 
years or so too late ; and did I not believe that of the 
patient five who courageously read this article, four 
think in their ''heart of hearts" as I do, I should not 
have placed my lips at the great confessional, with 
the " fearful hollow" of the Public's ear so near the 
other side. 

Music that is music, is a universal language, lor 
paean, plaint, and praise, breathed and felt alike by 
Greek and Barbarian, bond and free. The first we 
hear of it, those bright choristers, the " morning 
stars," were singing a lullaby over the cradled earth, 
and the last of it — may we never hear — it is the dia- 
lect of Heaven ! Every body loves it ; every body — 
don't deny it — has a tune or two laid up in his heart 
with the trinkets of memory — those little keepsakes 
of the past that every body loves to think of, but no 
body talks about ; and he must be very much of a 



AN UNSCIENTIFIC CHAT ABOUT MUSIC. 109 

fool or very mucli of a martyr who would dare it. If 
a man have a cherished thought or hope, it is wrap- 
ped up in a little song~it is itself a song. Samson's 
strength was hidden in a tress of hair ; and so the 
strong men, the world over, who eschew poetry and 
music as elegant trifles, have hidden their weakness 
in some sweet air of old — the sesame to feelings they 
have survived — the prophet's wand to the rock they 
fancy seamless. Find that out, and they are even as 
other men — touch that, and their hearts lie in two 
pieces before you. 

There is one, who never was horn, a sort of man- 
at-arms to Minerva — at least so he seems to think — 
who made his debut into breathdom in hoots and a 
beard, armed to the teeth, as Richard was, and for a 
like intent. Did you ever see him try to smile on 
childhood, without a lingering apprehension that he 
might play Saturn (see his godship's " bill of fare") 
with the little innocents ? Look at his eye, cold and 
gray as November, and his brow, latticed with 
wrinkles, as if to cage " some horrible conceit." Time 
never ploughed such a "bout" as that. Who ever 
heard him sing a song, or whistle a tune, or even drum 
with his fingers at musical intervals? Who ever 
caught him assaying a pirouette or reading poetry — 



110 JANUARY AND JUNE. 

heard him call any thing lovely or charming that 
couldn't be "checked," and journalized, barreled, 
baled, or bundled ? No body. And yet he is an ex- 
cellent man, upright as a mountain pine, regular as 
a chronometer, but some how or other, the place 
where his heart ought to be, is walled up — and taken 
altogether, he resembles a January night — very fair 
and very cold. 

Now look at him as he is — a cast-iron specimen of 
the cui bono school, and tell me, was he ever in love ? 
Did the light of his eye wax warmer once, and his 
tones grow deeper and softer, do you think ? Get a 
clerkship with him, and turn over old ledger "A." 

If you find any account of Miss 's investment, or 

Miss 's venture ; if you find the transaction duly 

booked, rely upon it, he was. 

Is there not, then, in all that heart of his, one 
rocky cleft, wherein a flower may cling, in sweet me- 
morial of a gentler time ? Does there not linger 
round those walls of stone, some echo, orphaned now, 
of a joy " lang syne" — another heart responsive to 
his own ? Is there, indeed, no hidden fountain, or no 
wand to wake it ? Ah ! yes. Of all the drums that 
beat life's reveille, there is not one, where'er it be, 
thrilling the fair billows of Caucasian bosoms, cr 



AN UNSCIENTIFIC CHAT ABOUT MUSIC. Ill 

'neath the dusky vestment of Ishmael's desert sons, 
that ahvays heats the dead-march of the past — some 
thoughts are sleeping there, " dewy with tears." 

Try him with an old song as he sits thoughtfully 
by the fire, between sunlight and lamplight — one of 
the sweet old songs our mothers sang. Hum it softly 
over. There's an impatient gesture. That's not the 
one? Another, then. He does not seem to hear 
you, but he does. Perhaps he looks fierce — perhaps 
" accompanies" you with tongs and fender — perhaps 
seizes a quill with nervous emphasis, as if to make a 
pen. No matter — sing on. He has cut it to the 
feather, ruined a best " Holland." You have him 
now. You will play sunrise with this Memnon, by 
and by. "5Vhere did you learn that ?" says he, with 
a dreadful scowl. You need not tell him ; he neither 
wants a reply nor waits for it. " 'Tis a silly thing, 
and none but silly people sing — don't you know it ?" 
Then comes a silence. Slowly he resumes the long- 
forgotten thread of thought. " It's a long time ago, 
since I heard that foolish song — twenty years — the 
evening before I left home" — then he had a nestling 
place once — " my sister sang it" — and a sister, too — > 
" and she — is dead now. Do you know the whole of 
it?" he asks abruptly, turning to you — "sing it, 



112 JANUARY AND JUNE. 

then." He listens awhile, grows uneasy, lights a 
lamp, opens a ledger, and pretends to write. " Pshaw " 
he mutters ; he has written his sister's name across 
the page. He seizes his hat, turns toward you with 
a face at least a lustrum younger, and says, " there, 
that will do," and slowly leaves the counting-room. 
Now look at that ledger's page. It is Hotted. Did 
he "blot it ? He, whose books are a fair transcript of 
his character — precise, unquestionable, and without 
stain or erasure ! Yes, a blot, but not of ink. You 
have made a better man of him — started the dormant 
mechanism of his heart again, and set the little 
handful of irritable muscle playing as of old. And 
an old-fashioned tune — words in a primer, notes no 
where — that old-fashioned people sing with old-fash- 
ioned voices — alas ! for that — trembling like a fast- 
failing fountain — such a melody has done all this. 

1 But the charm is attributable to association.' Is 
it ? Approach the cage of the fiercest of his race — 
a Hyrcanian tiger, and softly play a sweet air upon 
your flute, but it must be a good one, for though 
tigers have little talent for music, they have a great 
deal of taste. He lays his huge head against the 
bars of his prison ; his stormy breath is lulled by the 
magic potency of sweet sounds ; he is a kitten again ; 



AN UNSCIENTIFIC CHAT ABOUT MUSIC. 113 

and yet, the time when, wrapped in a little striped 
blanket of his own, he slept in the mountain cave, 
with the tempest for his lullaby, has very little to do 
with the " charming. " 

And the bright serpent — will my fair reader par- 
don the illustration ? — that ribbon of living satin — 
Satan ? — how does he, 

" That rolled away loose as the sea- wave, 

sweep up his coil 

Surge upon surge, and lay his gorgeous head 
"With its fixd, sleepless eye i' the centre ring, 
The watcher of his living citadel," 

when the Hindoo charmer breathes a tune upon the 
thrilled and slender reed ? How does he arch his 
glossy neck, and quiver to the strain, his tongue like 
a lambent flame moving the while in mute accompa- 
niment, thoroughly exorcised in the name, and by the 
spirit of harmony ! 

" I cannot silence such a voice as that," said the 
human tiger, and he returned the steel gilded for the 
Singer's bosom, uncrimsoned to his own — an offering 
snatched from the altar of blood, and transferred to 
the altar of song. 

Yes, there are strings in every heart — don't you 
believe it ? — that are not all worsted — that were not 



114 JANUARY AND JUNE. 

spun in a factory built with hands — not stolen from 
a silkworm's shroud — not continuations of the purse- 
strings ; chords of a nobler harp than Apollo swept, 
that sometimes play JEolian to the wings of angel 
thought. 

Here, then, music has its origin — hence, like the 
winged courier of the ark, it goes forth, and hither it 
returns, with the blessing and the song of peace. All 
hearts — gentle Charity, look the other way while I 
write it — all hearts are not full strung, but what of 
that ? Paganini made his fortune by playing upon 
one string, and "Mature made some to be like him. 

Physiologists tell us that if one, with whom the 
" daughters of music are brought low," stand on the 
sounding shore amid the thunder of ocean, he can 
distinguish those softer tones, that had floated round 
him inaudible in the silence. And so it is with the 
bird-like voices of the purer and the past, that wan- 
der by unheard on muffled wing, yet sometimes amid 
the din and hurry of the thronged and dusty world, 
thrill ear and heart, and charm us, for a moment, 
back to our better selves, ere the spring array of life 
was doffed for the rustling gold of harvest, or bound 
in the sheaf to fade upon the floor of the thresher. 
Age must bring its dower of the silver tress, but 



THE WIND AND THE NIGHT. 115 

"what of that, if the heart be young ? Music, as I 
am regarding it, is the great cosmetic that keeps it 
from growing old with years. But to be this, it must 
also be heart-fom. If it springs thence, it will rise 
like a fountain to its height again — fountain ? aye, 
that 's the word ! — and fall like it, in hope and 
beauty, over some other fountain that has ceased to 
play melodiously as of old — its sublime mission of 
beauty and blessing unended, till " the pitcher and 
the wheel are broken, when the dust returns to the 
earth as it was, and the spirit unto God who gave it." 



Some of the fruit-trees hereabouts have strange 
ways of their own ; indeed, I suspect a little apple- 
tree of being partly human. About tall enough to 
Bpeak Everett's 

11 You'd scarce expect one of my age," 

there it stood, in full leaf, every one newly varnished, 
holding on with all its might to a huge apple, pendent 
from the very extremity of a limb, its first sole offer- 
ing to Autumn and its owner. There it stood, as if 



116 JANUARY AND JUNE. 

straining every woody muscle to hold the wonder up 
to sight, and by the air of its little top, seeming as 
plain as words to say. "Look at me and mine, won't 
you?" Vain, little thing ! 

Close by, stands another tree of about the same 
size, and sporting, like its comrade, one big, red apple. 
But it seems to have learned wisdom from its ambi- 
tious little neighbor, and instead of holding out its 
burden at arm's length, it has taken it ' at an advan- 
tage,' having thrown it carelessly over a limb mid- 
way, with two or three glossy leaves disposed carefully 
over it, for all the world as our grandmothers — God 
bless them — used to carry their knitting work, with 
the neatly-folded blue cotton handkerchief, and the 
white stars in it — (what has become of the blue cot- 
tons, and the stars, and the grandmothers ? Lack-a- 
day ! all alike, worn out, and faded, and gone) — laid 
carefully over it. 

There stood the little tree, as nonchalant, as a dead 
shot, as much as to say, "that's nothing to what I'll 
do, by-and-by." I'll wager something on that tree. 
Ah ! that by-and-by ! There's the song of youth and 
hope, and the beat of a heart, locked up in it. And 
who would hush the song and muffle the throb beneath 
the mantle of worldly wisdom, but a dog and a cynic, 



THE WIND AND THE NIGHT. 117 

and they are brothers. Sing on ! heat on . say I ! It 
is the music of the march of life. 

There's a GLuince Tree. With its twisted, crooked 
trunks, springing cut of the ground all together, and 
turning and crowding in every direction, before they 
make a final shoot upward into the air, it locks as if 
it had been in such a desperate hurry to get up in the 
world, that it hadn't taken time to make ready, and 
hardly knew which way to go, when it got up. There 
are quite as many Quince bushes of the genus homo 
as of the "Cydonia Vulgaris" as the schoolmen call 
it. Well, tarts are pleasant, sometimes, if not too 
tart. 

How the Woods welcome a breeze, and how varied 
the modes in which that welcome is given. Have you 
ever thought of it, and did you ever see a wind ? 
There's one coming now — a mere- breath — creeping 
over the marsh, as if it would take the trees by sur- 
prise. Catch its portrait now, while you can. See 
it run over the tall grass, something like a shadow, 
with a sunbeam following hard after it. That Elm, 
with its pensile branches, like lace edging on the bor- 
der of the meadow ! The wind has swung itself up 
into it, and sways to and fro, as merrily as a Canary 
in a ring. Down it glides, and away for that silvery 



118 JANUARY AND JUNE. 

Poplar. How it shivers and quivers. Is the thing 
timid or glad ? Glad, I'll warrant, all of a trem- 
ble with very joy. The breath takes courage, and 
strengthens to a breeze. There 's " a brave old Oak," 
crooked and gray, like the tarnished old pendulum 
it is, swinging in the clear, sunny air, as it has swung 
these years and years. 

That billowy maple feels it now. How it swells, 
and rocks, and rolls, with its green billows, that har- 
monize so perfectly with the blue sky. What song has 
gone up from those leafy deeps, mcrning and evening, 
evening and morning, many a long-gone summer ! 

And there, in the distance, a tall tree — I don't 
know its name — tosses its lofty boughs, as if it would 
fain go with the breeze, and float away in a cloud 
And these little bushes — what a nutter there is among 
the small fry ! How they curl down to the ground 
and lie flat in the long grass. Then, up they come, 
and look taller than ever. 

The breeze is in all the woods, and all the woods 
are " a wave offering." Nodding, and waving, and 
trembling — rocking, and rolling, and swinging — shi- 
vering, and rustling, and tossing — the welcome of the 
Woods to the gentle wind. Deep, dark, glossy — vel- 
vety and silken greens are blended in the blast. 



THE WIND AND THE NIGHT. 119 

What a whispering, and elbowing, and crowding 
there is, while the wind sweeps up, with " the cap- 
full" of spray it dampens its wings with, a note of 
the tune the brook in the ravine trolls over to itself, 
and drops it, plump, in the midst of the woods, as its 
share of the welcome. 

But the prettiest sights of all were, to see a "Willow 
playing bo-peep with its shadow, reflected in the 
stream, as the wind, coming and going, bent it over 
the water ; and a little blue-eyed Flower, that grew 
in a chink of a rock, where it could look out all day, 
if it would, but when it heard the wind in the grass, 
back it drew, till the viewless went by, and then 
peeped cautiously out again, as if it feared the bold 
thing would return, and so it played " hide-and-seek" 
with the breezes. 

Of all the trees I saw, one only was not the 
better and the livelier for the wind. It was a knotty, 
withered Hemlock, that stood alone, like a gloomy 
thought in the midst of beauty. As for the old Hem- 
lock, it never moved ; there was not a leaf to rustle, 
not a bough to catch a breath. Solemnly it stood — 
the full noon could not gild it — the moon could not 
silver it — the rains could not make it grow green 
again. 



120 JANUARY AND JUNE. 

An eagle, a bald eagle — sat upon its scraggy and 
blackened top — I am not "romancing" — there it 
sat, motionless. Something glistened at the foot of 
the tree, in the sand that had drifted up around it. 
I approached — it was a fish's bones, remnants of 
a kingly meal aloft. The Bird of Freedom, inclined 
his body forward, his wings spread out like a sail ; a 
vigorous motion or two, and away he swept, through 
the realms of air; a shadow floated on the sand 
below — a figure on the sky above — the bird was gone. 
A cloud muttered in the distance — perhaps there ; 
the sun shone overhead — perhaps there. At all events 
' he had gone. 

And are there not those, who thus bereft of sum- 
mer hopes and glories, linger like that tree, in the 
midst of their fellows, ivith them, but not of them ? 
Of a spirit like that eagle, ' dwelling apart/ that 
might have been kind, but was made fierce — that 
would have sought companionship, but flung back 
into a dreary solitude, is now blent with the blaze of 
the sun, and now baptized in the gloom of the cloud ? 
But that tree was green once. Song and summer 
were among its branches, and that proud bird was a 
callow eaglet. 

A night in the woods, and a mid-summer night f 



THE WIND AND THE NIGHT. 121 

Starry as theAlhambra, leafy as Vallambrosa, still as 
an emphatic pause. Trees are flung backward on to 
the sky, with every branch and twig motionless, sha- 
dowy, but distinct — every tree, a great leaf of itself, 
as if Heaven would give us there, a picture of the 
forest as it sees it — nothing but a leaf or two, breath- 
less in the night. 

Here I am, in a little room, looking out upon the 
scene. The moon, yet but half filled, rides like a 
silver barque, low in the west, and a fringe of silver 
mist, marks the course of a little stream, stealing 
through a ravine a quarter of a mile distant. The 
sivash — not a pretty word but an expressive one — of 
the Lake, comes faintly to the ear, as the waves curl 
up the moonlight and the foam together, and lay them 
along the silvery beach. The uneasy, fitful tinkling 
of a bell, musical no where but in such a scene, seems 
to ring up " the Voices of the Night." 

The sound of a hundred little files is heard in every 
direction — we have fairly caught them at it — carving 
out the scollop of the leaves, and rounding up the 
buds. " Pshaw I" says some body — " it is nothing 
but a remnant of the locust tribe. " 

" Katy did !" "Katy did !" resounds in every direc- 
tion, and " Katy didn't !" " Katy didn't !" in a que- 



122 JANUARY AND JUKE 



rulous, Caudle-like tone, the affectionate response. 
"Katy!" "did!" "didn't!" "did!" "Katy!"— so it 
goes — the woods are filled with these domestic jan- 
gles. "Who is Katy, and what did she do, and what 
if she did, and is she pretty, were questions that found 
no answer, hut the still asserting, still denying " Katy 
did," and she didn't, of these queer insect gossips. 
Poor Katy ! 

" To-whit ! to- who !" Minerva save us, if there 
isn't her "bird, calling from his hollow tree, and " to- 
who !" "to who !" is the query still, farther and far- 
ther, till lost in the deep woods. 

" Whip-poor-Will !" says some body from a tree 
close by the window, in a sweetly plaintive voice, and 
"Whip-poor-Will !" "Whip-poor-Will !" is the cry all 
through the forest. What for ? What has Will done ? 
But " Whip-poor-Will !" was the sole answer I 
received. And I fell to speculating : " Katy did,' 
that 's certain, and from the " to who," I infer — by 
the way, what would you infer ? — well, I infer that 
Katy went to Gretna Green — so far, so good — " Whip- 
poor-will !" Thank you, my unseen advocate of cor- 
poreal punishment — that helps us out bravely — went 
to Gretna Green with poor Will. There it is, now, a 
plausible story, and if only there were some bird of 



THE WIND AND THE NIGHT. 123 

scandal to put it together, a rare bit of gossip it would 
make, to be sure. 

Alas ! for him, may-be he is sufficiently punished 
without the — there they go again, in full chorus, like 
a gathering of crones at a quilting. 

A single bark from the kennel ! a dozing hound is 
hunting in a dream. "We are all hunting in a dream — 
happiness the game, the " little life" the dream, and 
how weary, ofttimes, is the waking. 

" Um-m-m !" " ang, ang !" A thousand little horns 
nearer and nearer — here they are with an ang~k, and an 
uzh, as they come, like hussars, plump upon us. JSTow 
for the art of Roscius ! Gesticulation, pantomime, 
beating the bosom of the innocent air. Y/hat were 
mosquitoes made for ! Does any body know ? Down 
goes the window, out goes the light, and in go I 
through the " Ivory Gate" the poets tell of — the Gat© 
of ' pleasant dreams.' 



124 JANUARY AND JUNE. 



" Port" dashed into the house yesterday, overturned 
two chairs and the clothes-horse, and panted out, ' the 
car-a-van is coming ! Right on the hill !' Caravan 
coming ! "What could a caravan be thinking of, to 
wander away into this quiet neighborhood ? Yield- 
ing to the little fingers that tugged at my coat-sleeve, 
I repaired to the dcor, Port's tongue busy the while 
with, ' do you think it'll stop and show here ?' and 
* may I go ?' and ' goody ! goody !' to a provisional 
affirmative. 

And there it was, a huge coach, and no caravan, 
red as the setting sun, rocking over the hill, like a 
ship on a swell. Down it came, rolling and pitching 
into the valley, thundered over the little bridge, 
splashed through the little brook, till its wheels 
ground slowly and gratingly in the yellow sand. 

It was an event — indeed the event of the season. 
No body remembered when a stage passed here be- 
fore. The driver knew it, for he sat bolt upright on 
the box, and handled the ribbons with an air. The 



THE STAGE IS COMING. 125 

* leaders' knew it, for they tossed their glossy heads, 
and curvetted gaily enough. 

Memory put her name on the Way Bill, and Thought 
took a journey, a dozen years or so, Into the past. 

" Bright Improvement on the car of time" and 
steam, has caused the old coaches to disappear alto- 
gether, in many parts of the country, and with them, 
a chief remembrancer of other days. Time was, 
when the stage, like the Crocus, was yellow — bright- 
ened with the rain or splashed with the mud, always 
and for ever yellow as a Sunflower. But the hand 
of Innovation has dared to make them a fiery red or 
a jealous green — to dwarf their dimensions — to turn 
off " the leaders," and propel the puny craft with a 
pair of wheel-horses. 

That old yellow coach ! With what notes of pre- 
paration, it entered the little villages on the old 
" State Road !" How that immemorial horn drawn 
from its sheath, was wound and wound again, till the 
surrounding woods rang again, and all the town were 
at the doors, and every lower pane of glass was a 
juvenile face in a frame, to see who had come, and 
who was going, and all about it. How the old coach 
rattled and plunged down the hill — how it thundered 
over the bridge — with what professional skill, the 



126 JANUARY AND JUNE. 

driver drew his long whip from the top of ihe coach, 
and made its Alexandrine lash ring again, to the lead- 
ers' right and left — with what a sweep he whirled 
up before the Stage House, and reined them in, till 
the coach rattled and rocked like a ship ashore ■! 

It is early morning. The Landlord comes shuf- 
fling out in slippers — the maid stays her hand at the 
well, to see who gets out, and smile at the Palinurus 
of the craft — the Post Master comes across the street 
for the mail — a cloud of steam rises from the glitter- 
ing coats of the panting team — the relay comes filing 
out from the adjoining stable — some body in a green 
veil takes the back seat, to the great discomfiture of 
two drowsy aldermanic personages — the mail-bag is 
swung up beneath the driver's feet — the door is flung 
to, with a slam — a short, sharp note or two upon the 
horn — an instant's handling of the ribbons — a draw- 
ing of the lash through the fingers, as a surgeon feels 
his scalpel — an " all right" from the drowsy Boniface, 
and crack, smack, clatter, swing, away rolls the 
coach, and with it, the day's excitement. 

Then the acquaintances one used to form in the 
stage, whose memory will outlast the old coaches — 
Some body — perhaps the lady in the green veil, whom 
a lurch of the stage threw into your lap two or three 



JL SUMMER DAY IN HAYINQ. 127 

times as you sat vis-a-vis^ occasioning two or tliree 
apologies, until you felt quite acquainted, and wished 
the coach would move slower, the mud grow deeper, 
or the hours longer, lest the time of parting should 
come too soon. And it did come, and though years 
have passed, and you are a Benedict these lustrums 
of years, you rememher where you left her, and just 
what sort of a house, and what tree grew "before the 
door. It was a maple, or a poplar — which was it ? — 
you meant to go that way again, but you never did. 
And she — what's become of her ? Why, she wears 
a mob-cap, perhaps, and those blue eyes of hers look 
through green spectacles. 
So runs the world away ! 



inmwu §ag Jtt faatiifl. 



128 JANUARY AND JUNE. 

The blue walls of heaven, built up in the heavy 
masonry of night, parted, without a crash, nay, even 
without the soft and silken rustle of a curtain. The 
lights aloft, were put out, one after another, to give 
elicct to the scene ; the gates cf red rolcl swung Lack, 
noiselessly as the parting cf soft lips in dreams, and a 
threshold and hall inlaid with pearl, were disclosed. 

There was a flush, a gleam, and a glow over the 
lake, and there, paused the Sun, as if enchanted with 
tha scene he smiled on. A moment, and he stepped 
forth, but there was no jar; a moment more, and 
cloud, and wood, and hill, were all of a glory. And 
there was song, sweetest song ; the deep, blue Heaven 
W3S full of voices of unseen birds, that fluttered at 
the pale portal of morning. 

Five o'clock and a summer morning ! A silver 
mist han£8 along the streams, a few downy clouds are 
afloat, and the landscape is heavy with dew. 

The cows turned out from the milking, are tinkling 
their way along tho winding path to the woods ; the 
robins are calling to each other in the orchard, and 
an enterprising hen in the barn, is giving " the world 
assurance of" — an egg. Some how, earth, in such a 
morning, looks as if it were just finished, the coloring 



A SUMMER DAY EN HAYING. 129 

not dry, the mouldings not " set," without a grave 01 
a grief in it. 

Noting * the way of the wind,' and remembering 
that the sun ' came out,' as it set, last night, it is pro- 
nounced a good day for haying. So forth to the mea- 
dow they go, the farmer, the neighbors and the boys, 
' armed and equipped ;' a young bare-footed Com- 
missary bringing up the rear with earthen jug and 
bright tin pail. Much talk of ' wide swaths' and 
* mowings round,' with laugh and jest, beguiles the 
journey through the pasture to the field of battle. 
Coats and jackets fly like leaves in winter weather, 
and on moves the phalanx with the steady step and 
sweep, amid the tall, damp grass. One bends to the 
scythe as if it were an oar, and pants on in the rear 
of his fellows. Another walks erect and boldly up 
to the grass, the glittering blade the while, curving 
freely and easily about his feet. The fellow in Ken- 
tucky Jean, expended his strength in boasting, on the 
way, and labors like a ship in a heavy sea, while the 
quiet chap in tow, that never said a word, is the pio- 
neer of the field. 

On they move, toward the tremulous woods in the 
distance. One pauses, brings the snath to " order 
arms," and you can hear the tink-a-tink of ■ the 



130 JANUARY AND JUNE. 

rifle/ as it sharpens the edge of Time's symbol. An 
other wipe3 the beaded drops from his brow, and 
then, the swath-notes blend again, in full orchestra. 

Onward still; they are hiddea in the waving 
grass — all but a broken line of broad-brimmed hats, 
that rising and falling, seem to float slowly over the 
top of the meadow. 

Ten o'clock, and a cloudless sky ! The birds and 
the maples are silent and still ; not a flutter or twit- 
ter in woodland or fallow. Far up in the blue, a 
solitary hawk is slowly swinging in airy circles over 
the farm. Far down in the breathless lake, sweeps 
his shadowy fellow. The long, yellow ribbon of road 
leading to town, is a-quiver with heat. 'Brindle' 
and ' Red* stand dozing in the marsh ; the sheep are 
panting in the angles of the fences ; the horses are 
grouped beneath the old oaks; Lock, the faithful 
guardian of the night, has crawled under the wagon 
for its shadow, now and then, snapping in his sleep, 
at the flies that hum around his pendent ears ; the 
cat has crept up into the leafy butternut, and stretched 
herself, at length, upon a limb, to sleep; Jemiviy is 
dreaming on his drowsy perch ; and even the butter- 
flies, weary of flickering in the sunshine, rest like 
full-blown exotics, on the reeds. 



A SUMMER DAY IN HAYING. 131 

The children of the neighboring school, all flushed 
and glowing, come bounding down the slope, in cou- 
ples, the old red pail swung up between ; and the 
clatter of the windlass betokens * the old oaken bucket 1 
already dripping up into the sun, with its brimming 
wealth of water. 

Twelve o'clock and a breathless noon ! The corn 
fairly 'curls' in the steady blaze. The sun has 
driven the shadows around under the west and north 
walls ; it has reached the noon-mark on the threshold, 
and pours its broad beams into the hall ; the Morning 
Glories have ' struck' their colors, and a little vine^ 
trailed up the wall by a string of a shroud, shows 
decided symptoms of ' letting go.' 

The horn winds for dinner, but its welcome note 
surprises the mowers in the midst of the meadow, 
and they'll cut their way out, like good soldiers, de- 
spite the signal. 

Back we are again to the field ; aye, and back too, 
upon the threshold of childhood. A chance breath 
wafts to us, the sweet, old-fashioned fragrance of the 
new-mown hay, and we are younger in memory than 
we'll ever be again. The angry hum of the beea 
just thrown out of house and home ; and the whis- 
tling quail, as she whirled timidly away before the 



132 JANUARY AND 'JUNE. 

Bteady sweep of the whetted scythes ; and the shout 
of Porter or Johnny, as the next stroke laid open 
her summer hopes to the day ; and the bell-tones of 
the Bob-o'-links swinging upon the willows in the 
'Hollow.' Can't you hear — don't you remember 
them all ? 

And have you forgotten the green knoll under the 
wide-spreading beech — or was it a maple ? — -and how 
hungry you were, at the morning lunch, just from 
sympathy, though you hadn't ' earned your salt' for 
a week ? And the brown jug filled with pure cold 
water, and — in those old times, you know — the little 
black bottle, with something stronger, just ' to qualify' 
it, as they said, that nestled lovingly together, amid 
the cool and dewy grass in the fence-corner ? I am 
sure you remember how the magnificent loads went 
trembling into the barn, you upon the top, and how 
they heaped the new hay into the empty ' mow,' till 
it was half as high as the ladder — up to the ■ big 
beam' — up to the swallow-hole ; and how you crept 
up with a young troop, and hid away in a dark cor- 
ner, festooned with cobwebs, and ' played' you were 
a 'painter' or a catamountain, and growled terrifi- 
cally, to the unspeakable dread of your little brother, 
or cousin, or some body. Or, how, wearied of the 



A SUMMER, DAY IN HAYING. 133 

frolic, you lay upon the hay, and counted the dusty 
sunbeams, as they streamed through the crevices in 
the loose siding, and wondered how they got out 
again, and how many it took to make a day, and 
passed your fingers through them, to and fro, and 
marvelled that you felt nothing. 

Many a time, you know, you crept through that 
same meadow with Mary Gray — don't you remem- 
ber Mary ? — she lived in the house just over the 
hill — strawberrying. You picked in her basket — 
don't deny it — and you always felt happier than when 
you filled your own, though you never knew why. 
You had a queer feeling sometimes about the heart, 
though you never knew what. You have found it 
all but since, no doubt. 

And Mary — what has become of her? Why, 
• There is a Reaper, whose name is Death,' that goes 
forth to the harvest in sweetest Spring and latest 
Autumn and deepest "Winter as well, and Mary and 
Ellen and Jane were long ago bound up in "the 
same sure bundle of life !" 

Seven o'clock and a clear night ! The shadows 
and the mists are rising in the valleys — the frogs have 
set up their chorus in the swamp — the fire-flies are 
showing a light olF the marsh — the whip-poor-wills 



134 JANUARY AND JUHB. 

begin their melancholy song — a star blazes beauti 
fully over the top of the woods, and the fair beings 
that people our childhood, come about us in the "tra> 
light — the fair beings 

" Who set as sets the morning star, that goes 
Not down behind the darkened west, nor hides 
Obscured amid the tempest of the sky, 
Bnt melts away into the light of heaven," 

The Dead ! Cold word is dead. "What dumb ia 
to voice, and deaf is to 'the daughters of music/ 
that, dead is to life. 

Shall we know them again? Oh! question, & 
thousand limes asked, and a thousand times answered, 
* indeed and indeed !' 

I would not, if I could, shake so sweet a faith, but 
beautiful souls, you and I have known, that dwelt in 
tents of Kedar ; spirits ' express and admirable/ that 
looked, life-long, through dim and clouded eyes ; lips 
touched with a living coal from Inspiration's altar, 
that were never modelled from Cupid's silver bow. 

There was c old Jonah/ as every body called him, 
who ended his days in a cellar ; an African and a 
pauper. Deformed, almost repulsive, old Jonah had 
a beautiful soul-— that crazy, blackened tenement 
had a royal occupant. 



A SUMMER DAY IN HAYING. 135 

And when, in sunny days, the old man «rept out, 
and sat by his cellar door, youth and age, and I have 
seen beauty too, often paused to catch a gleam and a 
glimpse of the light hidden in that dark lantern. 

Said a friend to him, one day, ■ Wouldn't it be 
pleasant to die, some lovely summer morning, like 
this, Jonah V 

4 No, no, Massa, me die in night— better den.' 

* Why, Jonah V 

! Cos Heaven right in sight — but little way to go.' 

1 Jonah,' playfully remarked some one, * what a 
pity you are black P 

'Oh! no/ eagerly interrupted the old man, 'me'll 
be some body yet — me in disguise here. Much'sevet 
you'll know me, when we bof git ober Jordan. 
You'll see a man a comin', so splendid and Treau'ful, 
And you'll t'ink him some body bery great, and you'l] 
talk with him long time, and den, he'll jes whispei 
'Jonati in your ear, for 't'll be me all time !' 

Old Jonah is dead and gone ; and don't you think, 
when the tent was struck, and the curtains were 
withdrawn from the windows, and there were no more 
sighing and dying for him, that he threw off the dis 
guise, he had worn so long ? That the old man was 



136 JANUARY AND JUNE. 

right, when he said, ' much'sever you'll know me, 
when we bof git ober Jordan?' 

Surely it is not strange, either, that we should peo* 
pie the stars with those who have gone on before ; 
that we should fancy their gentle eyes bending upon 
us at twilight, ' cos,' as the old man expressed it, 
1 Heaven right in sight.' 

But there blazes the star still, over the woods. 
'Tis 

&§* jF!ag*star of 2Eben* 

She lieth just there in the offing of Heaven, 
Awaiting the flag at the window of Even; 
Lo ! the signal of crimson and gold is unfurled, 
And it flingeth a glory that flusheth the world ! 

No sound of artillery smiteth the ear — 
So calm you can catch e'en the fall of a tear ! — 
That foot-print of grief, on the cheek that is wet 
At thoughts of the past, we would never forget 
A moment, that banner is burning the sky — 
A moment, its beauty is lighting the eye — 
A moment — its glory and beauty depart^ 
Transferred to the sky in the west of the heart. 

Behold now, far out in the harbor of Heaven, 
A light like a star, from the Flag-ship of Even ! 
Her silver-fluked anchor, so steady and true, 
As lightly is swinging and dripping with blue, 
As swung o'er the sleeper the Bethel-bent beam 
That trembled to earth in the Pa^i *?Vs dream ! 






A SUMMER DAY IN HAYING. 137 

Her cable of crystal, and spars of the day, — ► 
Beneath her dance doubles, and spangle her way ! 
Her sails of weft glory, her cordago of light ! — 
Oh ! bravely she rides on the billows of night ! — 
Those billows that break on the shores of our earth— 
The pulse of an infant awaking to birth. 

As glimmers the moon through the rack of the storm, 

So, hard by her helm, I can fancy a form; 

The form of an Angel, with tremulous wings, 

A look deep and tender — a vision that brings 

A pang to the heart and a tear to the eye, 

For loved ones and lost ones that never can die ! 

Whose better and brighter e'en death cannot sever — 

Enshrined in the soul, and enshrined there for ever I 

Oh! child of my dreams — indweller of Heaven ! 
I see thee conducting the Flag-Star of Even ! 
Oh ! Flag-Star of Even ! I would it were mine, 
To leave this dull port and become one of thine ! 

Not a breath moves a streamer, or rattles a shroud ; 

On she comes like the morn, and still as a cloud ! 

On she comes through the clear azure sea of the ether, 

From God's throne co-etern', to earth's cradle beneath her. 

No crashing of wave, no thunder of billow — 

Calm as a maiden's cheek pressed to her pillow ! 

As forms of bright clouds in the waters beneath, 

As dim o'er the mirror just touched by a breath, 

So silently on through the motionless Heaven, 

To the gates of the west sweeps the Flag-Ship of Even— • 

O'er the heaven-bathed hills on the verge of the world, 

O'er the tremulous woods, her sails but half furled, 

She rides on the billows that break from the shore, 

She comes — ah I she wavers, and nears us no more ! 



138 JANUARY AXfi JUXE. 

Hark ! soft to mice ear from the Flag-Star of Evam, 

The sweet and unwritten Ioniq of Heaven ! 

like the foot-fall of thought in the halls of the soul ?— 

like the coming of twilight, around me it stole — 

Like the musie of wings it filled all the air, 

And I knew in my soul, a spirit was there ! 

The words that were said, I can never impart, 

They smote not the ear, but they fell on the heart 

As glitters the dew in the heart of the flower, 

So deep in my heart lies the thought of that hour ; 

When the breath of life's fever shall wither the will, 

That thought in my heart will be lingering still! 

When the fingers of Care weave thorns in my pillow, 

Like lilies, there still on the breast of the billow, 

Twill heave with my bosom, safely moored in the deep^ 

Where the waters of feeling e'er sparkle and sleep ; 

When life's shadow grows long, it will linger there yet, 

Like stars in mid-heaven that never can set 

Oh ! vision celestial ! wherever thou art, 

Magnetic to thee turns the thought of my heart; 

I have watched thee slow-threading the glittering flood - 

That pours round the throne — the ^Egean of God ! 

I have traced thee again, my beautiful one, 

'Mid the splendors of day o'er the disk of the sun I 

When the billows of morn break bright on the air, 

On the breast of the brightest, my angel is there! 

When the wings of my spirit are pluming for Heaven, 

111 wander with thee, gallant Flag-Ship .of Even! 



THE LAST ROSE OF BUMMER. 139 



t %ni tyast fff Summit. 



One of the boys brought me a rose, a red rose, to- 
day, or rather a red rose to be, for it is nothing but a 
bud yet ; and there was wisdom in that, unusual in 
this queer world. 

A full-blown blessing is pretty near ready to fade, 
and so the .urchin brought me a rose before it was a 
rose. 

Frosts stay late, and come early, in the great lati- 
tude of earth, and nearly all our hopes and happiness 
are in the bud — always in the bud. They seldom 
blossom — they seldom ripen— -they keep us waiting 
for summer ; • the early rains' of the human heart 
fall, but somehow a winter intervenes between April 
and July — 'the latter rains' are shed upon our 
graves, and the buds ne'er come to blooming. 

Well, were there no 'better land,' no brighter 
skies, no fairer flowers, Death's door would be a 
darker portal than it is. 

But there is more about this bud, that the Chemist 
might find out. It is dust — nothing but tinted and 
fragrant dust ; and into what forms, may it not have 



140 JANUARY AND JUNE. 

entered, in the transmigrations of time ! Perhapa 
trie very iron that lends the blush to the half-folded 
leaves, that the gentle winds ivould have unravelled, 
had it not been among *' the last roses of summer," 
has given color to some cheek that grew pale when 
the King of Shadows came — some cheek that had 
glowed beneath the lips of beauty, or at the first soft 
whisper of love — some cheek whose elements were 
strown to the winds; but kind Nature cared for 
them all, and shaped them out anew, in the bud of 
beauty that now lies withering before me. 

So, if it ever be your lot— God grant it never 
may! — to stand by the grave of one who died in 
beauty — one whom you loved, living, and mourned, 
dead, and the little billow of green turf above her 
has subsided, and a rose-tree waves there, in the soft 
summer air, leave a tear on it, if you will, but pluck 
not a bud ! 

In what disguisings does the past still linger around 
us ! " The Dead Past !" It is not dead ; it lives in 
the flower, the fountain, and the bow. 

Nay, the very tears shed by Humanity yesterday, 
are in the pearly and golden clouds of to-day. 

In the grand cycle of being, Death is nothing but 
change — 



SUMMER 141 



" a sea-change, 
Into something rich and strange." 



Summer 'was a lady — last night she died.* A 
trifle too ardent sometimes, perhaps, but then, beauti- 
ful—hut then, gone. 

What a glorious company of Summers there must 
be, some where, to be sure ! Eighteen hundred and 
fifty-three, since the new count began ; and no body 
knows, very certainly, how many before that. 

Oh ! for some new Machinist to arise, who shall 
construct a ' brake' for Time. Oh ! for a shrill North 
Easter, to ' whistle it down.' Wouldn't we bring up 
Time at the first Summer Station he came to, and 
keep him in a Depot of flow r ers perennially ? June 
should begin in January — December be as ■ pleasant 
as May.' 



fixtnibt Muh 



fall. 

Fall ! How eloquent the word ! The flowers 
fall in the gardens, the fruits fall in the orchards, the 
nuts fall in the woods, ' the stars ' fall in the sky, the 
rains fall from the clouds, the mercury falls in the 
tubes, the leaves fall every where, and Fall it is. 

The wind is sighing round the corners, moaning 
over the thresholds, singing at the windows, roaring 
over the chimney-tops, and harping through the 
forests. 

The gray clouds look angry and sullen. The great, 
heavy drops come driving against the window-panes ; 
the cattle stand in the fields, with the wind astern ; 
the sheep gather under the lee of the barn. They 
4 banked up ' the house, yesterday ; put the cabbages 
in the cellar, the day before ; will cover the potatoes 



144 JANUARY AND JUNE 

to-morrow. Mack and Poet call for their mitten* 
the Hue and white mittens — the immemorial mittens, 
tethered with a string. 

The black-birds, a rabble rout, hold high council 
of flight, on a dry elm in the meadow ; there is a 
twitter, and a flutter, and a great acclamation. Up 
go the swallows in a cloud ; away ride the sparrows 
on the billowy air. The robin and his wife hear the 
sound of wings in the thicket, and go too. The owl 
looks out from his hollow tree, and gathers still closer, 
his russet muffler about his ears. 

The ridged and tawny fields look rike corduroy ; 
their rustling and golden glories have departed. The 
corn stands shivering in long lines, wrapped in rusty 
overalls, like a regiment of 

■ Old Continentals in their ragged regimentals ;' 

The pumpkins lie in great heaps, here and there, like 
cannon-shot. 

Little ' flurries ' of snow whirl doubtfully through 
the cloudy air, and sift over the dark, old fallow. The 
sun goes down with a bounce ; it is dark before 
night. 

The asparagus is bundled out of the fire-place, the 
old andirons are wheeled into line, the hearth is a 



FALL. 145 

Maze, Hie windows are curtained, the old circle is 
narrowed around the old-fashioned fire. 
• Just the season for Saturday nights ! What blessed 
things they are, and what would the world do with- 
out them ? Those breathing moments in the tramp- 
ing march of life ; those little twilights in the broad 
and garish glare of noon, when pale yesterdays look 
beautiful through the shadows, and faces ' changed ' 
long ago, smile sweetly again in the hush ; when one 
remembers * the old folks at home,' and the old-fash- 
ioned fire, and the old arm-chair, and the little brother 
that died, and the little sister that was * translated/ 

Saturday nights make people human ; set their 
hearts to beating softly, as they used to do, before the 
world turned them hits war-drums, and jarred them 
to pieces with tattoos. 

The ledger closes with a clash ; the iron-door'd 
vaults come to with a bang ; up go the shutters with 
a will ; click, goes the key in the lock. It is Satur- 
day night, and Business breathes free again. Home- 
ward, ho ! The door that has been ajar all the week, 
gently closes behind him ; the world is shut out. Shut 
out? Shut in, the rather. Here are his treasures 
after all, and not in the vault, and not in the book, 



146 JANUARY AND JUJOE. 

(save the record in the old family Bible,) and not in 
the bank. 

Happy is the man who has a little home and a 
little angel in it, of a Saturday night. Such a night 
as last night was : cloudy, gloomy, gusty, rainy. 
Casements rattling, storm driving, lake roaring along 
the shore. 

So much for the out-door scenery. Now for the 
in-door; a martin-box of a house, no matter how 
little, provided it will hold two or bo ; no matter how 
humbly furnished, provided there is hope in it. Let 
the winds blow — close the curtains ! What if they 
are calico, or plain white, without border, or tassel, 
or any such thing ? Let the rains come down : heap 
up the fire, but it must be an open fire ; none of your 
dark, prison-looking stoves. 

No matter if you haven't a candle to bless yourself 
with, for what a beautiful light glowing coals make, 
reddening, clouding, shedding a sunset through the 
little room ; just light enough to talk by ; not loud, 
as in the highways — not rapid, as in the hurrying 
world ; but softly, slowly, whisperingly, with pauses 
between, for the storm without, and the thoughts 
within, to fill up. 

Then wheel the sofa round before the fire. No 



FALL. 147 

matter if the sofa's a settee, uncushioned at that, if 
60 he it is just long enough for two, or say two and a 
half, with the two or two and a half in it. How 
sweetly the music of silver hells from the time to 
come, falls on the listening heart then. How mourn- 
fully swell the chimes of * the days that are no more.' 

Under such circumstances, and at such a time, one 
can get at least sixty-nine and a half statute miles 
nearer * kingdom come,' than from any other point in 
this world laid down in * Malte Brun.' 

Mayhe you smile at this picture. Well, smile on, 
there is a secret between us, viz. : it is a copy of a 
picture, rudely done, hut true as the Pentateuch, of 
an original in every really human heart. Are you 
60 old or so wicked, that the cabinet picture is dimmed 
or damaged beyond * restoration V Then be shrived, 
make a Saturday night of life, and bid 'good night ' 
to the world. 

Maybe you think this a ridiculous picture : then 
Heaven mend and Alison cultivate your taste. 

Maybe you are a bachelor, frosty and forty. Then, 
poor fellow ! Saturday night's nothing to you, just as 
you are nothing to any body. Get a wife, blue-eyed 
or black-eyed, but above all, true-eyed, get a little 
home, no matter how little, and a little sofa, just to 
hold two, or two and a half, and then get the two, or 



148 JANUARY AND JUNE. 

the two and a half in it, cf a Saturday Night, and 
then read this paragraph by the light of your wife's 
eyes, and thank God and take courage. 

The dim and dusty shops are swept up ; the ham- 
mer is thrown down, the apron is doffed, and Labor 
hastens with a light step, homeward bound. 

" Saturday Night/ feebly murmurs the languishing, 
as she turns wearily upon her couch, fi and is there 
another to come ?' 

1 Saturday night, at last,' whispers the weeper 
above the dying, ■ and it is Sunday to-morrow and 
to-morrow.' 

INDIAN SUMMER. 

The Year has paused to remember, and beautiful 
her memories are. She recalls the Spring ; how soft 
the air ! And the Summer ; how deep and warm 
the sky ! And the harvest ; how pillar' d and golden 
the clouds ! And the rainbows and the sunsets ; how 
gorgeous are the woods ! 

Indian Summer is Nature's ' sober, second thought,' 
and to me, the sweetest of her thinkings. A veil of 
golden gauze trails through the air; the woods, in 
dishabille, are gay with the hectic flushes of the Fall ; 
and the bright Sun, relenting, - comes meekly back 



INDIAN SUMMER. 149 

again, as if he would not go to Capricorn. He has 
a kindly look ; he no longer dazzles one's eyes out, 
hut has a sunset softness in his face, and fairly blushes 
at the trick he meditated. Round, red Sun ! rich 
ruby in the jewelry of God ! it sets as big as the 
woods ; and ten acres of forest, in the distance, are 
relieved upon the great disc — a rare device upon a 
glorious medallion. The sweet south- wind has come 
again, and breathes softly through the woods, till 
they rustle like a banner of crimson and gold ; and 
waltzes gaily with the dead leaves that strew the 
ground, and whirls them quite away sometimes, in its 
frolic, over the fields and the fences, and into the 
brook, in whose little eddies they loiter on the way, 
and never get ' down to the sea ' at all. 

Who wonders that, with this mirage of departed 
Summer in sight, the peach trees sometimes lose theii 
reckoning, fancy Winter, pale fly-leaf in the book of 
Time, has somehow slipped out, and put forth theii 
rosy blossoms, only to be carried away, to-morrow 01 
to-morrow, by the blasts of November ? 

And with the sun and the wind, here are the birds 
once more. A bluebird warbles near the house, as it 
used to do ; the sparrows are chirping in the bushes, 
and the wood-robins flicker like flakes of fire through 



150 JANUARY AND JUNE. 

the trees. Now and then, a crimson or yellow leaf 
winnows its way slowly down, through the smoky 
light, and " the sound of dropping nuts is heard " in 
the still woods. The brook, that a little while ago, 
stole along in the shadow, rippling softly round the 
boughs that trailed idly in its waters, now twinkles 
all the way, on its journey down to the lake. 

It is the Saturday night of Nature and the Year— 

1 Their breathing moment on the bridge, where Time 
Of light and darkness, forms an arch sublime.' 

There is nothing more to be done ; every thing is 
packed up ; the wardrobe of Spring and Summer is 
all folded in those little russet and rude cases, and 
laid away here and there, some in the earth, and 
some in the water, and some flung upon the bosom of 
the winds, and lost, as ive say — but after all, no more 
lost than is the little infant, when, laid upon a pil- 
low, it is rocked and swung, this way and that, in the 
arms of a careful mother. So the dying, smiling 
Year, is all ready to go. 

"Ay, thou art welcome, heaven's delicious breath, 
When woods begin to wear the crimson leaf> 
And suns grow meek, and the meek suns grow briet 
And the year smiles as it draws near its death. 



INDIAN SUMMER. 151 

Wind of the sunny South! oh, still delay, 
In the gay woods and in the golden air, 
Like to a good old age, released from care, 

Journeying, in long serenity, away. 

With such a bright, late quiet, would that I 
Might wear out life like thee, mid bowers and brooks; 
And, dearer yet, the sunshine of kind looks, 

And music of kind voices ever nigh : 
And when my last sand twinkled in the glass, 
Pass silently from men as thou dost pass." 



Here I am, to-day, sitting by an open window, the 
wind, as gentle as June, playfully lifting the corners 
of the paper I write on, and letting them softly down 
again ; while yesterday, or the day before, I was in 
perihelion, nestled close in the chimney corner ; and 
the wind— — could it have been this same wind, now 
toying with the tassel of the curtain, that in such a 
mood, twisted up a little oak by the roots, that never 
did any harm, and hollow-voiced and frosty from the 
dim north-west, made penny-whistles of the huge\ 
old-fashioned chimney-tops ? 

Nature is a good deal of a rhetorician ; she lovea 
rapid transitions and startling contrasts. 

Time itself, all through the long-drawn past, is in- 
laid with day and night — night and day. Suppose it 
had been all day through the world ; it would have 



152 * JANUARY AND JUNE. 

been ' all day' with us — our happiness, our interests, 
and life would he " dull" at eighty cents on the dollar. 
!Now, we are like those wandering at leisure from 
room to room, in some splendid suite of apartments, 
divided by the dark and marble walls of night. We 
enter some beautiful day, pearl for its threshold and 
crimson for its curtains. With w T hat music they 
rustle, as unseen hands lift them to let us through ! 
And what varied surprises keep us on the qui vive 
all along, as we pass through it ! And how gorgeous 
the drapery let down behind us, as we enter the dark 
opening in the walls of night — those walls God 
built, and yet, through which, at a thousand points, 
shine divided days, yesterday, and to-morrow ! 

And what a lamp — no 'Astral,' but a true Lunar, 
is hung in the passage-w r ay ; and then, when we have 
done wandering through this great temple of Time, 
and pass the last door, and the veil closes down be- 
fore the last day, and we find ourselves " out-doors" 
in the Universe, and free to go whither we will — 
children again — aye, children "just let loose from 
school," how we shall scatter away over fields all 
flowers, and no frosts, where there is no such word as 
November, and no such thought as death. Life will 
be life still, but without its struggle, and ourselves 
still ourselves, but with windows all around the soul 



AND SUCH A CHANGE. 153 

We shall see hearts beat as plainly then, as we now 
see the movements of delicate chronometers beneath 
their crystal cases — emotions will be visible — the 
footfalls of thought audible — the trickery of light and 
shade by-gone, and things will appear as they are. 

And the pleasant surprises that shall meet us 
then ; perhaps the trees will grow by music, and the 
streams murmur articulate ; perhaps we shall meet 
and recognize those who had gone on before. New 
scenes, new beauties, new thoughts — every where 
* plus ultra' — more beyond. 
* 

" AND SUCH A CHANGE.' ' 

The glories of twilight have departed, and the 
gray night of the year has, at last, set in. 

The tree by my window has thrown off the red 
and yellow livery it has worn of late, and with naked 
arms tossing wildly about, stands shivering in the 
gusts, dismantled and desolate. Strange to say, I 
love it better than when song and shadow met in its 
branches — better than ever ; but it is not a love born 
of pity ; it needs none, for its life is locked up safely 
in the earth beneath, and whistle as it will, the boat- 
swain of a winter wind cannot pipe up a pulse or a 



154 JANUARY AND JUNE. 

bud. Through its leafless limbs, I can see Heaven, 
now, and there are no stars in the trees in June. 

The Sweet Brier creaks uneasily against the wall ; 
the snow is heaped on the window-sill ; the frost is 
c castle-building* on the panes ; the streams are dumb ; 
the woods stand motionless under the weight of white 
winter. 

It is Saturday — Saturday afternoon ; the children 
"just let loose from school," and Clear Lake is 
swarming with juvenile skaters. 

Grouped here and there in clusters, like swarms of 
bees or bevies of blackbirds in council, now and then, 
one and another and a third dash not in graceful 
circles, with motion as easy as flying. Huge sixes 
and sweeping eights, and eagles with enormous 
length of wing, are " cut" upon the " solid water." 

Presently, the whole cluster break and fly in every 
direction, like a flock of pigeons. There go a brace 
in a trial of speed ; there, a Castor and Pollux, hand 
in hand ; here, a game of goal is going on, and here, 
a game of " red lion." 

Away there, lies a little fellow upon his back, 
taking his first lesson in Skater's Astronomy. Ask 
him, and he will tell you he ' saw stars' but a mo- 
ment ago, that never were named. 



AND SUCH A CHANGE. 155 

The sun is going down in the west, and they have 
been upon the ice since high noon. But what is that 
to them ? What care they for cold, and fatigue, and 
time ? Saturday comes but once a week, and ica 
hardly once a year. But they'll find ice enough by 
and by — ice in midsummer — iced hopes, iced friend- 
ships, icy hearts. And as for the Saturdays, they'll 
grow " few and far between" — they'll not come once 
a week, nor once a month ; and happy will he be, 
who has a Saturday afternoon and evening to end his 
life with. 

Then who says, the boys shaVt skate ? Who 
grudges them the " rockers ?" Look at that little 
fellow now ; on one arm, hang his skates, " a brand 
new" pair, glittering like a couple of scimetars. 'Tis 
his first appearance on the Skater's field. Down he 
gets upon the ice ; his little red and white mittens 
tethered with a string, lie beside him, while with his 
chubby red fingers, he dallies and tugs with buckles 
and straps, every now and then blowing his fingers 
to keep them in a glow. All right and tight, he's 
rigged, lie's ready, he's up and off! What warrior 
ever harnessed for the field and the fray, with a 
richer pride mantling his cheek, or a brighter joy 



156 JANUAKY AND JUNE. 



lighting his eye ! There may have Been one or two, 
but there is no record of them in Froissart. 



Musing here by the sleepy fire, this stormy night 
about " one thing and another," the chime of bells, 
little and big, comes sweetly to my ear through the 
snowy air. 

Those sounds are mnemonic — they are the sweet 
bells of the past ; and in the time of a single note, 
we are back again into the vanished years, in a win- 
ter's night, the moon at the full, " some body very 
near," and the merry bells ringing as they ring now. 
How silvery were the laughs that issued then, from 
beneath the downy mufflers and quilted hcods. How 
bright were the eyes that glittered through green veils 
then, like stars through a leafy wood. 

Bells ! There have been knells since then, and 
those who "make no new friends," must journey 
alone. You who vaunt upon life and station, and the 
permanence of things earthly, return to the scenes of 
your youthful days of a winter's night. And the 
'turn out' — let it be as of old, and call here and 



THE OLD TIMES AND THE NEW. 157 

there, where dwelt the companions of a brighter 
time. Here the stranger, there the estranged, and 
there, echo answers to your impatient rap. 

The horses are at the gate, eager to he gone, and 
shake music from those hells at every toss of the 
head. But it is not music to you, and turning slowly 
homeward, you pass, in the moonlight, a field furrowed 
with many a drifted heap. It is " God's Field," and 
many who were your companions on just such a night, 
lie silent there. Ay ! mufHe the hells for memory, 
and pass on, a sadder hut a wiser man. 



How's your memory ? Does it run away back to 
the days of life's " drowsy east," and do the days that 
are gone shine yet upon the further borders of it ? 
Or have you one of those narrow memories, not broad 
enough for any thing but yesterday and the day be- 
fore ? And what do you keep in it ? Have you 
turned it into a blotter to put " credits" to yourself, 
and " debits" to some body else in ; a sort of meagre 
Almanac of " bills receivable ?" Or is it a beautiful 



158 JANUARY AND JUNK. 

place, like Laurel Hill or Greenwood, filled with the 
past — sweet records of joys departed— brighter days 
and downier hours ? If so, and I hope so, do ycu 
rememher the village church, and the choir, and the 
minister, and how they used to do then, and all about 
it? And what wouldn't you and I give, to he set 
back into the middle of one of those long Sunday 
afternoons, in one of those old-fashioned square pews, 
with our feet swinging about eight or ten inches 
above the floor, mother on one side with the everlast- 
ing sprig of carraway ; father on the other ; the 
singers on the high seats, away back ; the minister 
come, and all ready ? Don't you remember the pul* 
pit ? A queer thing, shaped like a swallow's nest, and 
fastened like a swallow's nest to the wall, about mid- 
way between floor and ceiling. Or perhaps it was a 
great, square, two-story device, with the architecture 
of a wheat-bin, and a dungeon of a place to put 
wood in, underneath. I'll wager a " concordance" it 
was one or the other. And what wouldn't you give, 
to have the faith in one man that you had in that 
old-fashioned minister ? Were you afraid of thunder, 
and don't you recollect when father asked him homo 
because it was likely to rain, and it did rain, and the 
thunder jarred the tangled sunbeams out of th« 



THE OLD TIMES AND THE NEW. 159 

cloud, how safe you felt because the minister was 
there ? Ah ! a child's sweet faith was made before 
Franklin dreamed of fixing bayonet against the tem- 
pest. And do you remember the day he died, and 
how you wondered so' good a man could die — how it 
shook your confidence in the permanence of earthly 
things, and made you sad and fearful, and gave you 
something to think of, when the folks thought you 
were asleep? And how he preached! "What sim- 
plicity, what eloquence, what fervor ! But alas ! for 
it, ■ the prayers of David, the son of Jesse, are ended.' 

And don't you remember how the gray heads were 
sprinkled among the congregation of tresses c brown 
in the shadow, golden in the sun,' like the first snow- 
flakes of November ? Well, they are not there now. 
There has been a sun or so too many, and melted 
them all away. Old Deacon so-and-so, that used to 
sit hard by the pulpit, now sits on the bank of the 
river that runs hard by the throne. "Who can doubt 
it ? He had a heart open as the day to melting 
charity ; he sang a little too nasal, then, we remem- 
ber, but he has a " new song" and a new harp now. 

Those were the good old times of the Church, 
nearer the days of the Pilgrims, the Covenanters, and 



160 JANUARY AND JUNE. 

Heaven. New songs, new sermons, new doctrines, 
and new faces have taken their places. Sacred be 
the memory of the old times for ever ! 



§ukti $siimstts. 

" How much did it weigh ?" 

" Is it possible ?" 

" I never !" " You don't say it !" 

Thousands of times has this question been asked, 
and thousands of times has it been wondered at and 
' I never'd.' 

And what commodity is it that is ' great ' at ten 
pounds and a marvel at thirteen ? Don't mind the 
Price Current, for it isn't there. It was a something 
bundled in a flannel blanket — the blanket securely 
pinned and knotted at the corners — the something, in 
an active state of ' unrest,' as the transcendental s 
have it. The steelyards had been called into requi- 
sition, and its bended iron was indeed * hooks to hang 
a hope on.' The little bundle was swung up ; the 
weight clicked along the bar. " That's the notch ! . 
Eight and a half!" Eight and a half of what? 



QUEER ESTIMATES. 161 

Why, of — humanity. By the memory of Malthus, 
there's a baby in the "blanket ! So there is — a little 
voter, or, if not that, as Shakspeare says, ' a child/ 
Something that may cut a figure in the world, break 
heads or hearts — have a great name, and be a man 
or a woman. Eight pounds and a half of a hero or 
a heroine, a monster or a minister. Piety and pa- 
triotism by the pound. Beauty and baseness by the 
blanketful. Queer measurement, isn't it ? but there 
are queerer still. 

Time wears on apace with us all, and the some- 
thing in the blanket too. He is a boy of five. He 
stands erect as God made him, ' that he may look,' 
as a writer finely says, ' upon the stars.' They are 
talking again, but the steelyards hang undisturbed in 
the cellar-way. No use for them now. But they 
are talking, and we not listening 

* Tall of his age, isn't he ? ' ' He looks over the 
table like a man ; the ' high-chair' was put away 
months ago !' 

Tall, is he ? Three feet and an inch high, and 
this is the altitude of humanity. "Weight is out of 
the question ; estimates all run to height. Ambition 
is but another name for altitude, and success a syno- 
nyme for 'getting higher.' The boy is a man; the 



162 JANUARY AND JUNE. 

man climbs rostrums to get higher; thrones, to 
get higher; mountains, to get higher. Monuments 
go up ; shouts go up ; favorites go up to court ; con- 
querors go up to glory. Height, height, every where 
height. Six feet of glory ; six feet two, of honor and 
dignity. Queer again — don't you think so ? 

By and by — melancholy trio — the form is bent a 
little, and there goes an inch or two from stature. 
He or she is looking at something in the dust. "What 
can it be ? Surely it is not a grave they look at. 
Eyes grow dim, and they bend lower to see. To see ? 
What can there be to be seen, we wonder ? 

By and by, they weary, and throw themselves along 
the bosom of the dusky mother of us all. They 
sleep — sleep, but they do not dream ! Where are 
your altitude now, your mountains, monuments, and 
thrones ? Men take up the sleeper, carefully, slowly, 
as it were a treasure. And so it is — a treasure of 
dust. The old estimate is resumed ; weight has come 
again ; 'tis ' a dead weight' — nothing more. 

And this would be queer, too, if only it were not 
sad. 

But they are talking again. 'She had three 
names, hadn't she ?' ' Indeed, but I can remember 
but two.' 



QUEER ESTIMATES. 162 

Remember but two, can they ? Names of what ? 
Why, of all that weight and height of fame and 
love, and hope and fear, and thought and passion. 

And two words — two breaths of air — two mur- 
murs, are all that is left of what once was a man, a 
woman. 

Years elapse, and Age is talking again : * There 
was — was — I cannot remember the name now — 
well, well, it's what we are all coming to,' and the 
old man sighs sadly. 

The last syllable of all, has died on the lip, is 
erased from memory, ripples not the still and listen- 
ing air — is lost ; not a murmur of it lingers in ' the 
fearful hollow ' of a human ear ! ' Pah ! how the 
dust flies !' Dust, do you say ? Listen, and we will 
whisper just a word : that dust was warm once, 
loved once, beauty once. 

" Imperious Caesar, dead and turned to clay, 
Might stop a hole to keep the wind away : 
Oh I that the earth, which kept the world in awe, 
Should patch a wall to expel the winter's flaw !" 

What more significant comment upon the vanity 
of royalty could be given, than Hamlet's next words ? 
There is a meaning in them beyond speech : 

1 But soft ! but soft ! aside : Here comes the King.' 
That dust again ! There goes a King, may be. 



164 JANUARY AND JUNE. 



Jt Want item t\t fast. 

Walking * up the road ' by the woods, the other 
evening, the music of the choir in the old School- 
house, came floating out into the darkness around me, 
and they were all new tunes and strange tunes, but 
one. And that one ! — it was not sung as I have 
heard it, but it awakened a train of long-buried 
memories, that rose to me even as they were, ere the 
cemetery of the soul had a tomb in it. 

It was sweet old Corinth they were singing — strains 
I have seldom heard, since the rose-color of life was 
blanched ; and I was, in a moment, back again to 
the old village church, and it was a summer after- 
noon, and the yellow sunbeams were streaming 
through the west windows, and the silver hair of the 
old Deacon who sat near the pulpit, was turned to 
gold in its light, and the minister, who, we used to 
think, could never die, so good was he, had concluded 
' application ' and ' exhortation/ and the village choir 
were singing the last hymn, and the tune was 
Corinth. 



A VOICE FROM THE PAST. 165 

It is years — we dare not think how many — since 
then, and 'the prayers of David the son of Jesse, 
are ended/ and the choir is scattered and gone. The 
girl with blue eyes that sang alto, and the girl with 
black eyes that sang air ; the eyes of the one, were 
like a clear June Heaven at night, and those of the 
other, like the same Heaven at noon. They both 
became wives, and both mothers, and they both died. 
Who shall say they are not singing Corinth still, 
where Sabbaths never wane, and congregations never 
break up ? There they sat, Sabbath after Sabbath, 
by the square column at the right of the ' leader,' 
and to our young eyes, they were passing beautiful, 
and to our young ears, their tones were the very ' soul 
of music.' That column bears still, their pencilled 
names as they wrote them in those days in life's June, 
183-, ere dreams of change had o'ercome their spirits 
like a summer cloud. ^ 

Alas ! that with the old Singers, most of the sweet 
old tunes have died upon the air ; but they linger in 
memory, and they shall yet be sung again, in the 
sweet re-union of song that shall take place by and 
by, in a hall whose columns are beams of morning 
light, whose ceiling is pure pearl, whose floors are all 
gold, and where hair never turns silvery, and hearts 



166 JANUARY AND JUNE. 

never grow old. Then she that sang alto, and she 
that sang air, will be in their places once more, for 
what could the choir do without tJiem ? 



IE JU H IN- 
PATIENT reader, did you ever wait ? Are you any 
way related to the patriarch of Uz, and did you wait, 
meekly, quietly, resignedly ? Longfellow hit it once, 
1 palpably,' when he enjoined upon all his readers, 

? Learn to labor and to wait.' 

Laboring and waiting compose the great business of 
life. Any sinner can do the former, but as for the 
latter, it takes a saint. 

Wait? We are forever waiting. Don't you re- 
member when you were waiting to throw off the 
* rifle-dress,' for pantaloons, and the red stubby shoes 
for regular boots, just like father's, or uncle's, or 
somebody's ? ' You are a lady ?' Beg pardon. Well, 
ladies never get beyond thirty-five, and you can re- 
member how you waited till you could wear youi 
hair ' done up behind,' with a comb, and sport — a — 
well, what politicians like to make — a bustle. And 



WAITING. 167 

don't you remember how you waited for a beau or a 
belle, or to be eighteen or twenty-one ? Every body 
waits. School-children wait for ' the last day ' and 
vacation ; undergraduates wait for commencement 
and college honors ; poets wait for fame, and like 
their funeral trains, if they have any, it is posthu- 
mous ; agriculturists wait from seed-time till harvest ; 
politicians wait from campaign to campaign ; preach- 
ers wait for ' the moving of the waters f watchers 
wait for morning ; the weary wait for evening, and 
the old and friendless wait for dying. 

Sad are they who have no body to keep them com- 
pany. There is a waiting Angel, and her name is 
Hope, for what is Hope but a happy waiting ? Reli- 
gion has made her an arc/^-angel, and christened her 
Faith. The former looks into the future of this 
world, and the latter looks into the future of that. 
Maybe you call this transcendental, Germanic ; maybe 
you call it nonsense. Be it so ; it is a nonsense that 
will pass under the guise of wisdom by and by, when 
the masquerade of life is ended, and ' things are what 
they seem.' 

So, Hope and Faith together, are for ever singing a 
little song, whose burden is 



168 JANUARY AND JUNE. 

it tofU all It rtof)t in tit J&oroing. 



When the bounding beat of the heart of love, 

And the springing step, grow slow; 
When the form of a cloud in the blue above, 

Lies dark on the path below, 
The song that he sings is lost in a sigh, 

And he turns where a Star, is dawning, 
And he thinks, as it gladdens his heart and his eye: 

'It will all be right in the morning ! \ 

ii- 
When 'the strong man armed/ in the middle-watch, 

From life's dim deck is gazing, 
And strives, through the wreck of the tempest, to catch 

A gleam of the day-beam's blazing; 
Amid the wild storm, there hard by the helm, 

He heeds not the dark ocean yawning ; 
For this song in hi3 soul not a sorrow can whelm: 

' It will all be right in the morning ! * 



When the battle is done, the harp unstrung, 

Its music trembling — dying ; 
When his woes are unwept, and his deeds unsung, 

And he longs in the grave to be lying, 
Then a Voice shall charm, as it charmed before 

He had wept or waited the dawning: 
' They do love there for aye — I'll be thine as of yore — 

It will all be right in the morning ! ' 



WAITING 1G9 



IV. 



Thus all through the world, by ship and by shore ; 

"Where the mother bends over 
The cradle, -whose tenant ' has gone on before ;' 

Where the eyes of the lover 
Look aloft for the loved ; whatever the word, 

A welcome, a wail, or a warning, 
Tins is every where cherished — this every where heard: 

1 It will all be right in the morning 1 ' 

Death itself is a great waiting ; ' there is no more 
work nor device ' — the laboring, which is the living, 
is subtracted, and we have that dread, dumb and 
dusty ' remainder/ they call death. 

Some body, maybe, who wears a heart — a piece of 
extravagance, too, as the world goes — may analyze 
this compound of living, and find no love in it, and 
eschew the definition, and set me down as no philoso- 
pher. Laboring is loving, and loving is a good, strong, 
healthful action of the heart ; something quick, but 
not too quick ; something warm, but not feverish. 

"Work, and the heart beats ; the harder you work, 
the faster it plays, and one is just in the condition to 
love, when he is just in the condition to labor. Some 
people are too lazy to love, and so they wait till they 
die, and keep waiting, Heaven knows how long ! 



170 JANUARY AND JUNE. 



$ff lufjirm fjirr t&tojor. 

'No Room for Two!* was the exclamation of 
some insider, the other morning, as two persons were 
endeavoring to demonstrate that the capacity of an 
omnihus has no such property as impenetrability, by 
crowding into a carriage already having its prescribed 
six on a side. And so they retreated ; bang, went 
the door, crack, went the whip, and away rolled the 
omnibus, toward La Porte, leaving the twain to go, 
emphatically, ' by private conveyance.' 

No room for two ! An omnibus, * all full inside,' 
is not the only place in the world where there is no 
room for two. 

Ambition that, through ' seas incarnadine,' has 
attained power, can ■ bear no brother near the throne,' 
for there's no room for two. 

Avarice, that has grown lean and hungry, as he 
ministered to the golden god he has set up and wor- 
shipped, has no place in his soul for sympathy ; with 
him, there is no room for two. 

Purpose, whose clear and single eyes descry a signal 
on the dim outline of the swelling future, and who 



NO ROOM FOR TWO. 171 

marches steadily on until he reaches it, says, to all 
that can divert, distract, delay, ' there is no room for 
two.' 

Youthful Love, as she sets up a new presence in 
the shrine of her heart, ' made in the image of a 
creature of dust, and surrounds it with all the offer- 
ings of a spirit affluent in generous affections, whispers 
to herself, as she does so, ' there's no room for two.' 

He who has waited and wept during lingering and 
wearisome years, for the ripening of some blessing, 
that shall crown his life with a golden harvest at last, 
takes up the word, when that blessing comes, and 
exclaims, in the fulness of his heart, ' there's no room 
for two ! ■ | 

And when we all — as all must — shall, one by one, 
lie down, we trust ' to pleasant dreams,' still comes 
that lonely voice, as eloquent as ever, ■ there's no room 
for two Y 

As the song has it, in its sweet refrain, 

1 There's nae room for twa, ye ken, 

There's nae room for twa ; 
The narrow bed where all maun li% 
Has nae room for twa. 

' There's nae room for twa, ye ken, 

There's nae room for twa ; 
The heart that's gie'n to God and Heaven, 

Has nne room for twa,' 



172 JANUARY AND JUNE. 



%\t Grammar juf °§xft. 

* Long time ago,' some day this month — you and I 
should remember exactly — a man was horn, whoso 
name has been to the juvenile world * a household 
word ;' sometimes a word of terror, hut now, as I 
remember it, a word to conjure with ; to wave up 
scenes and forms long faded and crumbled. Lindley 
Murray ! Did you ever hear of him ? And do you 
not remember his little book, that like another * little 
book,' was * bitter,' and never sweet at all ? And 
don t you recollect how firmly it was bound, old Iron- 
sides that it was, and what was on the fly-leaf — John, 
or James, or David Somebody, 'his book,' and that 
Lochiel-like couplet : 

* Steal not this book, my honest friend, 
For fear the gallows shall be your end.' 

And who printed it, ■ H. & E. Phinney,' and the year, 
1800 and something ? 

Shut your eyes now, and you can see every page of 
that old Grammar ; just where the noun began, and 
the ' verb to be,' and Syntax, with its terrible code of 
twenty-two, exactly twenty-two rules. 



THE GRAMMAR OF LIFE. 173 

And how like quarter horses, we plunged through 
the moods and tenses of the verb ' Love ! ' Who has 
forgotten, or who ever can forget, how it went, and we 
went ? ' I love, loved, have loved, had loved, shall 
or will love, shall have loved.' On we darted, 
through the cans, and the coulds, and the mights, of 
the potential, and the mysterious contingencies of the 
subjunctive, till we rounded to on the trio of parti- 
ciples that brought up the rear of this marvellous 
cavalcade of deeds, probable and possible, present, 
past and future, in the great art and action of loving. 

And then, when you came to prepositions, how they 
puzzled you — how they puzzled us all ! Don't you 
remember the definition? Right hand page, four 
lines from the top, just before conjunctions, on the 
threshold of Syntax ? 

Thus it ran : ' Prepositions are words used to con- 
nect words, and show the relation between them ;' or, 
to give little Joe Miller's, or some other little fellow's 
version, ' Pep'sition word used c'nect words show 'la- 
tion 'tween 'em.' Showed ' relation ' did they ? And 
what relation? Blood relation or relation by mar- 
riage ? And so we puzzled and pondered, and passed 
it over, and learned ' the list,' that went like a flock 
of sheep over a wall, ' of, to, for, by, with, in.' 



174 JANUARY AND JUNE. 

And who has forgotten those queer contrivances of 
conjunctions, that connected and didn't connect ; and 
what a God-send the interjection was, in the midst 
of the fog, with its oh ! ah ! and alas ! Often had 
we employed it ; we understood, felt, appreciated it. 

Then the wonderful process they called ' Parsing ' — 
wonder if they do it yet ; when we used to take coup- 
lets from the prince of English rhyme, and, a row of 
little cannibals that we were, there we stood, beneath 
the unwinking optics of our teacher, and " transposed," 
alias mutilated, " paraphrased," alias butchered, and 
every thing but devoured, his immortal lines ! 

Do you not recollect how we disposed of 

"la spite of pride, in erring reason's spite, 
One truth is clear — whatever is, is right?" 

After much science and little sense, the light used 
to burst upon our bedazzled intellects, about once a 
winter, that Pope meant to say, and did say, " what- 
ever is right, is right ! " Do they dream in the grave ? 
Does the bard sleep peaceful yet ? 

And where's the boy that sat next, in the grammar 
class ? And the bright-eyed girl, that used to whis- 
per the answer so softly to us, and save our juvenile 
palms many an acquaintance with the oaken ferule — ■ 
where is she ? Does she whisper hope and happiness 



THE GRAMMAR OF LIFE. 175 

to any tody still ? Are her eyes as bright, and her 
steps as light as of old ? Or has Death, that great 
bailiff closed her eyes and set a seal upon her lips ? 
Who knows ? "Who can tell ? 

And the old schoolmaster, gray " as long ago as 
we can remember " — gray before that — does he teach 
Grammar still ? Is his step as firm, and his eye as 
steel-like gray as it was wont to be then ? 

And the ancient schoolma'am, old Miss E., who 
lived in the yellow house next to the village green, 
and taught us spelling and etymology ; she too is con- 
jured up by the spell of " Old Murray," and we see 
her looking over those spectacles, as she used to do 
when she meant to be " awful." One day she " put 
out " celibacy, and though 'twas the name of her 
lonely state — poor old lady ! — that circumstance didn't 
let her into the pronunciation, and " silly bossy," for so 
she gave it, threw the class into convulsions. Great 
was her wrath on that memorable day. Two of u? 
were imprisoned beneath the stairs ; two were sen* 
tenced to stand upon one foot, one held in extended 
hand, Walker's Dictionary — decidedly a great work; 
was that dictionary ; and a lad who was desperatelj 
'afraid of the girls,' was set between a bouncing 
brace of them. 



176 JANUARY AND JUNE. 

But it wouldn't do. " Sillybossy " would not down, 
and smothered sounds, chokings, outright laughter, 
broke forth from every corner, around the perplexed 
and angry schoolma'am. 

Years have fled; the tenant of the old yellow 
house is doubtless borne away, and " the places that 
once knew her, shall know her no more for ever." 

So much for ' old Murray ' and the memories it has 
awakened ; and beautified by time, I can almost wish 
myself back again, in the midst of the days when 
Murray was a terror, and his pages a mystery 

But why didn't ' the master ' hint, sometime, that 
we should never be done with the tenses until we 
were done with time ? That the world is full of 
them ? That the world is made of them ? That, 
for the sturdy, iron present tense, full of facts and 
figures, knocks and knowledge, we must look among 
the men in middle-life — the diggers and workers of 
the world ; the men who, of all others, have disco- 
vered, for the very first time, at forty or forty-five, 
that the present tense is noiv ; that in the shop, the 
store, the warehouse, the field — on docks and decks, 
the real, living present, reigns supreme ? That, for 
the bright, golden, joyous future — full of the tones of 
silver bells and beating hearts, merry tongues and 



THE GRAMMAR OF LIFE. 177 

merry feet, you must look in our swarming schools, 
peep beneath little soft blankets, in cradles at fire- 
sides, or examine small bundles of white dimity? 
That we should find the future astride of a rocking- 
horse ; lullabying a wax baby ; flying kites, trundling 
hoops, or blowing penny- whistles ? Why didn't he 
tell us — or did he leave that for the poets ? — that they 
who wear the silver livery of Time; that linger 
tremblingly amid the din and jar of life ; whose 
voices, like a failing fountain, are not musical as of 
old ; that they are the melancholy past ? 

"Why didn't he teach us — or did he leave that for 
the preachers? — that "cold obstruction" claims all 
times for its own : glowing action, the present ; hope, 
the future ; and memory, the past ? 

" One pluperfect ! " Ah ! we have had that to 
zmlearn since. " One future ! " "Who does not thank 
God, that, in this world of ours, there are a myriad ? 

" I shall be," and " I might have been ! " The 
former the music of youth, sweet as the sound of 
silver bells ; fresh as 

" The breezy call of incense-breathing morn ;" 

the latter, the plaint of age, the dirge of hope, the 
inscription for a tomb. The one trembles upon thin, 



178 JANUARY AND JUNE. 

pale lips, parched with " life's fitful fever ;" the other 
swells from strong, young hearts, to lips rounded and 
dewy, with the sweetness of hope and the fulness of 
strength. The one is timed by a heart that flutters, 
intermits, flutters and wears out ; while that of the 
other, beats right on, in the bold, stern march of life. 

" I shall be," and " I might have been !" What 
toil and trouble, time and tears, are recorded in those 
little words — the very stenography of life. How like 
a bugle-call is that " I shall be," from a young soul, 
strong in prophecy ! " I shall be — great, honored, 
affluent, good." 

" I shall be," whispers the glad girl to herself, as 
with one foot upon the threshold of womanhood, she 
catches the breath from the summer-fields of life, " I 
shall be — loved by and by !" That is her aspiration ; 
for to be loved is to be happy, 

11 I shall be," says the struggling boy, " I shall be 
the possessor of a little home of my own, and a little 
wife, some day, and the home shall be * ours,' and 

the wife shall be mine, and then — and then " 

Who can fill out those ' thens V Who, but the paintei 
that has dipped his pen in sunset ? Who, but the poet 
whose lips have been touched with a coal fresh from 
the altar of inspiration ? 



THE GRAMMAR OF LIFE. 179 

" I shall be — victorious yet," murmurs the man in 
the middle watch, who had been battling with foes 
till night fell, and is praying, like the Greek, for dawn 
again, that ' he may see to fight.' 

" I shall be," faintly breathes the languishing upon 
her couch of pain — u I shall be better to-morrow, or 
to-morrow ;" and she lives on, because she hopes on, 
and she grows strong with the " shall be " she has 
uttered. 

And the strong man armed, who has ■ fought the 
good fight,' and has ' kept the faith,' when they that 
sustained his extended hands through the battle 8$* 
departing, and no Joshua to bid the declining i 
'stand still,' as he looks beyond the rugged hills 
the world, and sees a window opened in heaven, ant 
a wounded hand put forth in welcome, lays aside the 
armor he has worn so long and well, and going down 
into the dark river, he utters, with a hope glorified to 
faith, 1 1 shall be over the Jordan to-morrow !' 

Before the memory has a tomb in it — before it be- 
comes the cemetery, the " Greenwood " of the soul — 
u I shall be " is beautiful as an old ballad. "When 
graves are digged therein, and willows are planted, 
and hopes are buried, and no light breaks out of the 



180 JANUARY AND JUNE. 

cloud, then " 1 shall be " is as grand as an old psean. 

When 

The battle is done, the harp unstrung, 
Its music trembling, dying, 

Then " I shall be " is as sublime as an old prophecy ! 

But there is another tense hi this Grammar of Life 
it were well to remember ; the sparkling moment 
that dances out from the ripening hours, like golden 
grain, beneath the flails of Time, as we write, and 
even as we write, is gathered into the great garner of 
the Past. 

There is an injunction it were well to remember : 

'Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant; 
Let the dead Past bury its dead ; 
Act, act in the living Present — 
Heart within and God o'erhead ! ' 



jjp ff n't | jar jtt. 

Old Letters ! Don't you love, sometimes, to 
look over old letters ? Some of them are dim with 
years, and some are dim with tears. 

Here is one now, the burden of which is, ' Don't 
forget ;' the device on the seal is, ' don't forget,' and 



DON T FORGET. 181 

the writer thereof went, winters ago, to "the narrow 
beds of peace." But surely, she needn't have writ- 
ten it, for we can't forget if we would. 

Don't forget ! They are common words ; we hear 
them, perhaps use them, every day, and yet how 
needless, we may almost say, how meaningless, they 
are. What is it we forget ? That which was fore'- 
gotten, and set down in the tablets of memory, long 
ago ; set down, we may not remember where, we 
may not remember when, but it is there still. Re- 
move with the palm of Time, the inscriptions upon 
marble — cat out with its * corroding tooth,' the let- 
tering upon brass, but that thing fore'gotten remains 
unobliterated. Some breath may whirl back the 
leaves of memory to its page — in some hour, an epi- 
tome of its contents may be unrolled before us. 
Every thought consigned to memory is immortal — its 
existence runs parallel with the mind that conceived, 
and the heart that cradled it. * Don't forget !' "We 
cannot forget. Earth is full of strains Lethean of 
man's invention, but the past is with him still. 

New days, new hopes, new loves arise ; but ' plea- 
sant yet mournful to the soul is the memory of joys 
that are past.' Oui eyes are dazzled with the clear 
of the present, but dimmed with the cloud of the 



182 JANUARY AND JUNE. 

past. Ride as we will, on the swiftest billow of to- 
morrow, we are never out of sight of yesterday. 
There it shines still, with a tearful, gentle light, like 
some pale Pleiad through the rack of the storm. 
" Don't forget !" Ah ! the science that could teach 
men to forget, would he more welcome than all the 
trickery of Mnemonics. 

When the heart beats sadder, and the tide of life 
runs slower, how the Yesterdays come drifting down 
to waiting Age — waiting for him who enters hall and 
hovel, unbidden and unstayed. " Don't forget !" 
Alas ! who does not remember ? 

Even Ocean itself, busy as it is, in laving from its 
shores, all records of the past, is the great memory of 
the natural world. Clarence' dream was no fiction, 
and its treasures glitter, and whiten, and sway amid 
the groves of red coral. But even the Sea is not 
oblivious, for " the Sea shall give up its dead." 



BLESSED ALMANACS. 183 



hmft ^Imsiwrs* 



While I am writing these words, a pair of "bright 
particular" eyes, just on a level with the table, are 
following my pen in its eccentric movements over the 
page. Don't you and I wish our eyes were just on a 
level with the tables again ! The owner of the eyes 
aforesaid, is a Lilliputian, not nearer to Heaven, as 
Hamlet had it, even " by the altitude of a copine," 
than Port, and he lacks a sheet of paper of three feet. 
And speaking of eyes, where can you find a brighter 
pair of interrogation-points, than the eyes of a child ? 
Seeing every thing, and turning every thing into a 
query, that they see ? 

Subject yourself for a half hour to one of these 
youthful inquisitors, and you are more of a philoso- 
pher than I take you to be, if he doesn't pose you, in 
less than half the time. 

But small as he is, his ambition, like a vine in a 
garden, has run all over the month of December, and 
leaved and flowered at a tropical rate, some where 
near the 25th. ■ How many days is it to Christ- 
mas ?' ' How many Saturdays is it V There is no 



184 JANUARY AND JUNE. 

school on Saturdays, and the little rascal keeps his 
calendar by play-days ! Well, let him, for few 
enough of them he'll find by and by, unless he lives 
on into the Millennium. ' And will Santa Claus 
come ? — and how can he come down the chimney 
and the stove-pipe ? — and does he come Christmas or 
New Year's?' There's that vine of his, a week 
longer than it was, a minute ago. 

* Oh ! have him come Christmas ! Have him 
come Christmas !' and eyes, and feet, and heart, for 
that matter, all dance together. Have him come 
Christmas ! There spoke the child of a larger 
growth. There peeped out the man, through the 
disguise of boyhood, thus early drawing on the future, 
like a gay heir in expectancy, to make up the deficits 
of the present — an extravagance, that has made 
many a man and woman bankrupt for the amount 
of a thousand hopes sterling, and 'the undivided 
half ' of a life full of happiness, 

Men have a weary train of days — days of care 
and toil, if not of tears ; but children have, in their 
calendar, but four or five days in a whole year — 
Christmas, New Year's, and Birth-day, Fourth of 
July, and Thanksgiving — but they, like great lamps, 



BLESSED ALMANACS. 185 

light up all the year, and keep the little fellows per- 
ennial candidates for hope. 

How much happiness is purchased for how little in 
the Holidays ! And it is easily calculated that if 
eighteen pence will render a hoy just turned of six, 
supremely happy, two-and-six pence will make a lad 
of nine, a prince. 

"Who wouldn't invest in such property ! 

But those eyes ; there they are yet, looking over 
the table's edge, and I cannot help dreading the 
time when they will look down upon it, and one can 
see shadows in them, and the coming of a real tear 
in them — for children seldom weep — and a heavy 
light in them, and dimness and death in them. 

True, there are shadows there now, but they are 

like those 

" by a clotid in a summer-day made, 
Looking down on a field of blossoming clover." 

A cloud ! Life itself is a morning cloud, and 
whether with shadows or glory, glides swiftly and 
silently by. 



186 JANUARY AND JUNE. 



Mm jof u Mtm" 



Some body, curious in minerals, has sent me a 
piece of Lead Ore, as "bright in coloring and regular 
in form, as if it had been * made by hand, 5 and there 
lies the little cube on the table, this minute. 

I am informed it is some eighty-five per cent, pure 
lead, and it is very likely. 

Lead is gray, sometimes " silver gray," it is dull, it 
has no music in it, it cannot be shaped into swords, 
nor yet into ploughshares, and yet it is not without 
its poetry. 

True, we cannot make blades or bells of it, but 
we can make balls. "Who would suppose now, look- 
ing at that dull lump of lead, that it ever ' took to 
itself wings/ like gold, its better, and flew away ? I 
said it had no music in it, but I was too fast ; I re- 
tract, for there is a little song in that stupid block, 
that has charmed princely ears before now. Was it 
Charles the Xllth, or Frederick the Great, that 
thought the singing of bullets, the sweetest of sing- 
ing ? Sing ? Maybe you do not think lead can sing ? 
But moulded into bullets, and flying like hail upon 



THE WONDERS OF "GALENA." 187 

the field of battle, you shall hear its song, as it hums 
by like a harmless bird. Often and often has it proved 
a knell to strong, tall warriors ; often and often has 
it made widows and orphans, and done what preach- 
ers could not do — brought tears into dry eyes. Ah ! 
there is a wonderful eloquence, as well as a wonder- 
ful song, in the steel-gray lead. Sometimes it sounds 
a little like a sigh, and it is not to be marvelled at, 
considering the errand it so often goes on. 

But there is more about lead than has been told 
yet. Look at it now, so cloddish, so senseless. It 
has no endurance ; place it in the fire, and it runs 
away ; it cannot resist heat. Strike it with a ham- 
mer, but it gives out no ringing cry ; it is dumb. 

And yet, senseless as it is, they have made a nerve 
of it, and hundreds of lives and thousands of hope3 
depend upon its doing its office. 

Mists are over the water and clouds are over the 
sky, and the lights are out on the shore — the lee 
shore — and the vessel is bewildered, if not lost. 
They must move — they keep moving. Shall they 
go upon the rocks ? Shall they drive upon the shore, 
a broken wreck ? Heaven has no eyes for them, earth 
no eyes, they no eyes, and so they must feel their way 
into port. 



188 JANUARY AND JUNK. 

Down goes the lead : " five fathoms !" M Six 
fathoms !" " Seven fathoms !" "All right !" 

Take care ! 'Tis shoal again ! Heave the lead ! — 
keep heaving. There ! move on steadily. Deeper, 
deeper, grows the water. They have made the har- 
bor. They are safe ! They felt their way through 
the waves, through the night, through the storm ; 
and the wonderful nerve was a line with a lump 
of Lead. 



Sir* ®I&-$as{ji.0tu& $\tt. 

Down goes the mercury to the zero of Celius and 
Reaumur. Down it goes again, to the of Fahren- 
heit. The frost is creeping, creeping over the lower 
panes, one after another. Now it finishes a feather ; 
now it completes a plume ; now it tries its hand at a 
specimen of silver-graining. Up, up it goes, pane 
after pane, clouds, and feathers, and grains. Here a 
joint, there a nail cracks like a craft in a racking 
storm ; but all is calm and cold as death. Clink ! 
goes a forgotten glass in the pantry. The door-latct 



THE OLD-FASHIONED FIRE. 189 

is plated ; half-hidden nail-heads, here and there in 
the corners, are ' silvered o'er with ' — frost. 

But what cared we for that, as we sat by the old- 
fashioned fire ? Back-stick, fore-stick, top-stick, and 
superstructure, all in their places. The coals are 
turned out from their glowing bed between the senti- 
nel andirons — the old-time irons, with huge rings in 
the top. One of them has rested, for many a day, on 
a broken brick, but what of that ? Many a beautiful 
tree, nay, a whole grove, maybe, has turned to glory 
and to ashes thereon, and will again, winters and 
winters to come. 

A handful of ■ kindlings p is placed beneath this 
future temple of flame ; here and there a chip, a 
splinter, a dry twig, is skilfully chinked into the inter- 
stices of the structure ; a wave or two of the house- 
wife's wand of power, and the hearth is " swept up." 
The old bricks in that altar-place of home, begin to 
grow bright, and ' as good as new.' A little spiring 
flame, ambitious to be something and some body, 
creeps stealthily up, and peeps through the crevi- 
ces, over this stick, under that one, looking like a 
little half-furled banner of crimson. Then come 
another and another, and down they go again, the 
.timid flames that they are ! By and by they grow 



190 JANUARY AND JUNE. 

bolder, and half a dozen, altogether, curl "bravely 
round the " fore-stick/' and up to the " top-stick," and 
over the whole, like the turrets of a tower at sunrise, 
one, two, three, four, five spires, Then they "blend 
together, a cone of flame. Then they turn into bil- 
lows and breakers of red, and roll up the blackened 
wall of the cliimney, above the jamb, above the man- 
tel-tree, away up the chimney they roar, while the huge 
" back-stick," below all, lies like a great bar, and 
withstands the fiery surf that beats against it. 

The circle of chairs is enlarged ; the ' old arm- 
chair ' in the corner is drawn back ; one is reading, 
another is knitting ; a third, a wee bit of a boy, is 
asleep in the corner ; they look into each other's faces, 
look beautiful to each other, and take courage and are 
content. There is not a shadow in the spacious room ; 
the frost creeps down from the windows ; the ice in 
the pail, in the corner, gives a half lurch, like the 
miniature iceberg it is, and over it goes with a splash. 
The fire is gaining on it. The latch and the nails 
lose the bravery of their silvering ; the circle round 
the fire grows larger and larger; the old-fashioned 
fire has triumphed. It is summer there, it is light 
there. The flowers of hope spring up around it ; the 
music of memory fills up the pauses ; the clock ticks 



PBESTO ! CHANGE ! 191 

softly from its niche above the mantel-piece, as if 
fearful of letting them know how fast it is stealing 
away with the hours — hours the happiest, alas ! we 
seldom live hut once ; hours whose gentle light so 
often shines from out the years of the long-gone morn- 
ing, on into the twilight of life's latest close. 

Ah ! necromancers swept the magic circle in times 
of old; hut there is none so beautiful, none with 
charm so potent, as the circle of light and of love 
around the old fashioned fire ! 



There is a beautiful harmony and order in Nature, 
which the more one contemplates, the more he finds 
reason to admire. 

Calling at the office of a friend, a while ago, who 
is * curious ' in matters of Mineralogy and Geology, I 
noticed upon a table, specimens of the wonderful, 
progressive operations of Nature. There was deli- 
cate moss, some of it yet wearing the color of sum- 
mer ; and some had passed beyond " the sere and 
yellow leaf," and had apparently been bleached. 



192 JANUARY AND JUNE. 

Near the moss, lay a fragment of porous stone. 
resembling in color and structure, though more com- 
pact, the whitened moss. Next to this was a speci- 
men of firm rock ; the pores were filled up ; the whole 
had indurated, and there, hut two removes from the 
green moss, lay the material of which Ambition 
rears his monuments, War his defences, and Love, 
her cherished homes. 

And near all these, w T as placed a glass jar, which 
contained the agent that had wrought this wonder — 
pure cold Water. It is dumb now, but the time has 
been, it had a voice, and a song in it, as it went 
sparkling down over that moss, leaping into life and 
sparkling into sunlight. 

It was indeed a beautiful series, in impressiveness 
far superior to the most eloquent description. 

Nature kindly disguises herself, every where around 
us, and it is the eye of Science alone that detects in 
the beauty of change, nothing but the beauty of 
death. 

Do my fair readers think — if I have any — while 
their pencils glide so freely with an ' at home/ over 
the polished surface of the India card, that the very 
surface they admire, is composed of the lunar shields 
of little warriors, who have fought the fight of life, 



PRESTO ! CHANGE ! 193 

glittered like all heroes, their hour in the sunbeam, 
laid aside their armor and died ? 

Do they think that little card, that little parallelo 
gram of pearl, is the cemetery of thousands — that the 
beauty of that surface is the beauty of death ? 

And so with the roses that blush in our pathways, 
and cluster round the graves of our dead. Could we 
but know whence their elements were derived — did 
we but think that perhaps the tint that gives beauty 
to the leaf, once colored the cheek of the loved, how 
differently would we regard these children of a Per- 
sian sun ! 

It was one of the beautiful and truthful sayings of 
an eminent naturalist, that the everlasting hills and 
the firm rocks, are but the relics of former life. 
They are indeed the alto-relievo records of things that 
were. The * rotten stone/ composed of the crescent 
shields of little creatures that sported their day and 
died ; the white chalk rocks, the catacombs of ani- 
malculce with limbs, and pulse, and armor for de- 
fence — people, a million of which, are comfortably 
accommodated within a single cubic inch. 

En passant — do ladies ever study Geology ? 
There's a catalogue — let us see : " "French, Philoso- 
phy ; ' Paley,' Painting ; "Worsted- work and ' Wor- 



194 JANUARY AND JUNE. 

cester;' 'Day' and Dancing; Geometry and" it 

isn't there. And pray, "why not ? "What is Geology, 
after all, but the History of the World, written by 
itself; Time's own biography, printed and paged, col- 
lated and bound by the fingers of Omnipotence? 
And here it is, written down to the last sunset ; not 
a leaf lost, not an illustration dimmed, since the 
1 first form,' creation's recorded smile, was flung off, 
damp with the night, and welcomed with a starry 
song. Go where you will; from Erie's 'record 
steep,' whose awful flood yet chimes a perished age ; 
from the ' notched centuries ' in her living rock, to 
the wave-worn pebbles, those notes the brooks sing 
by, and what are they all, but chronometers to mark 
time's viewless flight ; to tell the age of singing 
streams, and when those chimes began ? Turn back 
the leaves of this ponderous volume, ere human foot- 
prints soiled them, and yet how legible tlie record ! 
The leaf faded by that first frost in Eden, that flut- 
tered down to earth, lo ! here each fibre of its frame 
in lithograph ! An insect's wing is there ; perhaps it 
trembled in the evening beam, ere tears or blood had 
stained the glorious page ; perhaps its fellow wilted 
in the breath of that first sacrifice. Here are they 
all, without erratum, blank, or blot. And what is 



VOICES OF THE DEAD. 195 

Botany, but the "beautiful binding, the ornate title- 
page of this great volume, which few fair fingers 
have ever assayed to open ? 



The world is full of voices. Early morn, the deep- 
est noon, the stillest night, each has a tune of its 
own. Here now, it is close upon midnight. The 
shouts of children and the clatter of wheels, and the 
clangor of "bells, and the footfalls of the multitude 
have ceased. Men's hearts beat softer and steadier ; 
the engine fires have died out like fierce thoughts in 
iron breasts ; the World is asleep, and yet, how voice- 
ful is the Night ! 

What a time for the dead to talk — the mighty 
dead — they are talking. Oh ! ye who think their 
utterances are confined to dim cathedrals, and char- 
nels dark and old ! It is not so : they are in the 
thronged city ; in the stores, the offices, the shops — 
the dead and their utterances are, if you only had 
time to listen, and the world were still enough to let 
them be heard. 



196 JANUARY AND JUNE 

The Dead ! aye, look solemn, if so it seems to you — 
the Dead are in your apartment to-night, and would- 
speak — they have been icaiting to speak — if you 
would only heed them. 

A few fragments of coal are glowing through the bars 
of the stove, and now for the first time, in twelve hours, 
they make themselves heard. And what a voice the 
coal has, to be sure. It is something like the murmur 
of a distant multitude — something like the pedal bass 
of an organ, a great way off — something like the j ar 
of a railway train — something like a wind wandering 
through a wood. 

And now I think of it, there is melody in the tone ; 
soft, mournful ; the plaint of the prisoned coal — its 
murmuring memories of better times— the voice of 
the Dead. And they ivere better. Better, when that 
poor fossil waved in a great glorious tree, all covered 
with Spring, all tremulous with Summer airs ; when 
music with wings, made nests in its branches ; when 
its leaves sang a song of their own. 

Ah ! melody of another sort was that, from the low 
semi-sullen, semi-sad monotone it greets us with now, 
through the grate. 

Fossil ! I called it a fossil, and so it is : some^ 
thing dug out of the earth. We shall be fossils by 



VOICES OF THE DEAD. 197 

and by ; beauty, a fossil ; youth, a fossil, and if not 
fossils, then plain-spoken dust. And when we — that 
' we ' means you and me — when we get to that, shall 
we give light like the poor Anthracite, or Bituminous, 
or Lignite, or whatever it is ? Shall our thoughts, 
our deeds, our hopes, make a little summer and a lit- 
tle day in the midst of the winter and the night of 
the world, like this insignificant coal ? 

Here's a piece of Anthracite~a stray piece by the 
by — -lying on the hearth. We know it to be such, 
from its metallic colors, and its shell-shaped surfaces. 

Ah! "it is stone-coal you speak of," says the Eng- 
lishman ; " I ken it 's blind coal,'' puts in the son 
of old Scotia; and "it's Kilkenny coal ye're afther 
Bpaking uv," interposes an exile of Erin. Yes, for it 
has as many titles as a prince, it is all these. This 
fragment came from toward the head waters of the 
Lehigh perhaps, but for that matter, it might have 
come from Calton Hill in the land of Lochs, from 
Walsal in white-clifFed Albion, from dusky Norland, 
from old Holland, from Andalusia, from the Alps, 
from " little Rhody," for it is at home, nearly all over 
the world. 

Some people are for ever talking of the wonders of 
the Imagination and the beauties of Poetry. Hew 



198 JANUARY AND JUNE. 

now is a beautiful wonder, and a wonderful "beauty. 
That fragment of coal — we kick it about the hearth, 
we handle it with the shovel, we touch it with thumb 
and fore-finger as if it were glowing hot; we say 
of a desperate case, * black as coal/ We personify 
smutted coarseness as a huge coal-heaver, and yet, 
this worthless fragment lacks but about twenty-eight 
per cent. — not as much as many a poor fellow has 
paid for the loan of a dollar — of being all carbon ; and 
if we could only manage to get rid of the alumine and 
the silex, and the oxide of iron, why then, it would 
be, of a truth, all carbon, and pure carbon. " Well, 
and what then ?" you say. Not much to be sure, and 
yet enough to sink the anthracite, the stone, the blind, 
and the Kilkenny, and don a new title ; enough to 
make that thumb and finger a whole hand, to 
close over it with the clutch of a vice, all along 
through life, and away through into death ; enough 
to turn earth into a battle-field, and redden the turf 
before sunset ; enough to transform a fair-browed, 
open-souled boy, into a wrinkled, glowering old fiend. 
And what is all this about, you inquire ; what this 
carbonic wonder ? A yellowish or bluish, or reddish 
or brownish, eight-sided crystal ; a thing strown along 
from Bengal to Cormorin ; a thing that glittered in 



VOICES OF THE DEAD. 199 

the hilt of the sword of ' the man of destiny ;' that 
the Autocrat of Russia waves in his sceptre ; that 
glows on velvet round many a princely brow. It is — 
but what's the use of telling, when you know 
already ? — it is that thing they call a Diamond — elder 
brother of the coal, the swarthy Anthracite. 

" Brilliant," " Rose," or " Table" Diamonds— by 
whatever name, they call them — burn them in Oxy- 
gen Gas, which is nothing but the mere day-breath 
of flowers, and you have only carbonic acid gas — an 
element that transformed the Black-hole of Calcutta 
into the charnel-house it was — an element that you 
cannot breathe and live. And where's your Diamond ! 

Return we now to the black brother of these bril- 
liants, the Anthracite. Examine it, and you shall 
find no trace of the wood it was. Cunning Earth 
has effaced each fibre, and made it a mineral treasure, 
and no tree can claim its kindred. 

And how long, think you, has it been since that 
coal had the silken texture of a leaf, a flower, a 
shrub ? How long since childhood slept beneath the 
shade it helped to make ? How long since Beauty 
breathed its fragrance in a flower, and listened and 
believed that love was changeless ? And the Beauty and 
the Lover, and the sentiment are fossils, or are dust, or arc 



200 JANUARY AND JUNE. 

nothing now, to you or me. Here now are two specimens 
of Mineral Coal ; tlie Black, the most common of the 
smutty fraternity, that brightens the grates of all Eng- 
land, and envelops it in a coal-heaver's " glory," and 
the Cannel or Candle-coal, with its polished surface, 
and its peculiar odor, and the crackling it makes when 
first heated. Cannel Coal when * at home ' in Eng- 
land or Scotland, Ohio, Virginia or Pennsylvania, 
has a roof to he under — a roof of slate, where Na- 
ture herself played tiler, and decorator withal, for 
those roofs of slate all bear imprints of ferns — the 
lithographs of old time. And last of all the brother- 
hood, I shall mention, there is the Lignite, with its 
clove-brown tint, and its woody texture. And better 
company it keeps, than the most of its genus. Ycu 
may find it strown in the Amber Mines of Prussia, 
and arnid the crystals of an Iceland winter ; Lignite 
betrays the secret of its origin, for there are the fibres 
still, the outlines of the branches and the leaves of 
trees, that once had life in them, and beauty and 
music. 

Ah ! who wonders the Coal has so sorrowful a tone, 
as it glows and sighs there in the grate, with its voice of 
4he Dead. The Dead ? We said, awhile ago, the Mighty 
Dead ? and it is mighty. Open that Atlas, lying under 



VOICES OF THE DEAD. 201 

your elbow there, and find for me New- York, and then 
pass your finger over that parti-colored robe of States, 
through the South Pass, away where you can fancy 
you hear the clink of the diggers of gold. Would 
you see the power that can weave that full breadth 
of space into something like a selvedge, with the Steam 
Engine ? Look in that grate, and you shall see the 
thing that can do it. Do you see that Mountain's 
steep, and that granite column at its base ? Ambi- 
tion's self could not raise it to that mountain's brow 
with regiments of men, in half a century; but a 
dozen bushels of Coal can do it, in half an hour ! 

But those fragments of coal have burned out, and 
the grate is no longer of a glow. I take the shovel 
and stir the bed they have made for themselves. No- 
thing but ashes — ashes for the garment of mourning — 
ashes for the urn — ashes for the winds — the mighty 
Dead no more ! 



202 JANUARY AND JUNE. 



To-morrow is Thanksgiving Day. * Come to think,' 
there was no necessity for telling it. There is no 
school, so the children all know it; no paper, the 
editors and devils all know it ; the Governor has pro- 
claimed it, and every hody knows it. Some people 
have visions of turkeys ' ahout these days ;' I don't. 
Some people have turkeys ; I haven't. But no mat- 
ter for that ; I love Thanksgiving Day for the memo- 
ries it brings with it. Do tell me, if you can, what 
has become of those old days, and why don't they 
make them so now ? Has * the clerk of the weather * 
lost the recipe, or what, in the name of scythes and 
forelocks, is the matter ? It used to be, that Thanks- 
giving wasn't Monday, or Tuesday, or "Wednesday, or 
any other day of the seven, but a day by itself, put in 
by " special act," to make people happy and friendly, 
and human, and all that ; but some how or other, it 
has changed. Almanacs have changed, or ive have ; 
and greatly do we fear it is the * we.' 

Kind reader, I never saw you, don't know you, but 
here's my hand, and there's a chair ; and now for a 



THANKSGIVING. 203 

tete-a-tete about old times. The last time you were 
at home Thanksgiving day — do you remember \ "When 
the boys came home from college, or some where, and 
the married sister, Ann, or Jane, or something else, 
came too, as proud of the little white-flannel bundle, 
with blue eyes, that made uncles, aunts, grandfather 
and grandmother, with its first glance, as ever queen 
was of her crown ? And wasn't that baby a novelty 
in the old homestead ? And was it you or me, that 
rummaged the garret for the old red cradle they lulled 
as in, when, fast to the strong moorings of a mother's 
love, we rocked on the hither shore of time ? And 
who brought down * the high chair/ that, in turn, 
had been the throne for a half dozen of us, " more or 
less," in turn, as we grew large enough to wield the 
weapons of table warfare ? And who doesn't remem- 
ber where that chair was tucked away in the garret 
aforesaid ? Over behind the little wheel, that used 
to hum to the sweet song mother sang, years and 
years ago. And there's the distaff now, in the chink 
, of a rafter. Do you remember the fine morning we 
went to the woods after it, and a bright, black-eyed 
boy, just turned of four, went too ? There he sits 
now, on the opposite side of the table, ' in the old 
place,' with whiskers and a beard, and a voice that 



204 JANUARY AND JUNE. 

would mock a nor' wester. That song ! How we 
tried to get mother to sing the eld song we loved so 
well ! 

11 Boys, I can't sing," says the old lady ; " my sing- 
ing days are over." But she was over-persuaded, as 
she always was — for to which of us did she ever 
refuse a boon ? — and how still it was when she "began ! 
Her voice was like a fast-failing fountain. She fal- 
tered as the old memories came thronging back upon 
her, and some how her glasses were a little dim, and 
she took them off to wipe them, and some how all 
our eyes were a little dim. God bless the old-fash- 
ioned mothers for ever ! Who of us didn't say it 
then ? Who of us does not breathe it now ? 

Well, then came the dinner — the Thanksgiving 
Dinner. How the pantry and the poultry had suf- 
fered to 'furnish forth' that marriage table — the 
marriage of the present and the past. It was the old 
table with the fall leaves, that had succeeded the 
little predecessor, when there were only father, mother, 
and one baby. The old strife " to set the chairs " up, 
is renewed. We are all seated— every chair filled. 
Filled ? Every chair ? Ah ! but one, or two, oi 
three. God grant it be but one ! God grant it be 
not one ! That one vacant place ! All see it, all 



THANKSGIVING. 205 

remember. There is a pause ; a thought and a sigh 
for the absent, and the battle begins. How old 
reminiscences are revived ! and we all get, years nearer 
the purer realm of childhood and Heaven. 

The afternoon wears away. Apples from the trees 
that were planted when each of us was born, are 
brought from the cellar, that aforetime was the very 
1 blue closet ' of unimaginable terrors to the timid of 
us. And among them, is an apple from Fred's tree, 

and Fred is No body can say it, so every body is 

silent. 

One look at the rooms ; the " north room,'' and the 
" south room," and the "east room." Here are 
So-and-so's initials on the window - casing. They 
look dim, but maybe the dimness is nearer the eyes, 
after all. 

The sleigh-bells (there used to be snow in old-fash- 
ioned Thanksgivings,) chime impatient at the door. 
Such bundling, and muffling, and good-bying — the old 
lady urging us, every one in turn, to keep warm, and 
tying our ' comforters ' — tJiat's the word — over again, 
and all that. Away we go, one after another, and 
the old homestead is quiet again. The branches of 
the old oak rustle audibly over the roof, in the No- 



206 JANUARY AND JUNE. 

vember wind, and a family is again scattered over the 
world. 

Maybe now, some * mighty man,' like those of old, 
who has \ put away childish things/ and has forgot- 
ten he was ever born, may deem this puerile. Well, 
well, I have no more to say than this : we can all 
lo much worse than to be children again, for 

' Of such as they are, is the Kingdom of Heaven.' 



%\t ®I& garni. 

Sarcastic people are wont to say that poets dwell 
in garrets, and simple people believe it. And others, 
neither sarcastic nor simple, send them up aloft, among 
the rubbish, just because they do not know what to 
do with them down stairs and ■ among folks,' and so 
they class them under the head of rubbish, and con- 
sign them to that grand receptacle of dilapidated 
4 has-beens/ and despised ' used-to-beV — the old 
garret. 

The garret is to the other apartments of the home- 



THE OLD GARRET. 207 

stead what the adveib is to the pedagogue in pars- 
ing : every thing they do not know how to dispose of, 
is consigned to the list of adverbs. And it is for this 
precise reason that I love garrets ; because they do 
contain the relics of the old and the past — souvenirs 
of other and happier and simpler times. 

They have come to build houses now-a-days with- 
out garrets. Impious innovation ! 

You man of bronze and ' bearded like the pard,' 
who would make people believe, if you could, that 
you never were ' a toddlin wee thing ;' that you never 
wore ■ a rifle-dress/ or jingled a rattle-box with infi- 
nite delight ; that you never had a mother, and that 
she never became an old woman, and wore caps and 
spectacles, and maybe took snuff; go home once 
more, after all these years of absence, all booted and 
whiskered, and six feet high as you are, and let us go 
up the stairs together, into that old-fashioned spacious 
garret, that extends from gable to gable, with its 
narrow, oval windows, with a spider-web of a sash, 
through which steals ' a dim religious light' upon a 
museum of things unnamable, that once figured be- 
low stairs, but were long since crowded out by the 
Vandal hand of these modern times. 

The loose boards of the floor rattle somewhat as 



208 JANUARY AND JUNE. 

they used to do — don't they ? — when beneath you* 
little pattering feet they clattered aforetime, when of 
a rainy day, * mother,' wearied with many-tongued 
importunity, granted the ' Let us go up garret and 
play.' And play? Precious little of 'play' have 
you had since, I'll warrant, with your looks of dig- 
nity and your dreamings of ambition. 

Here we are now in the midst of the garret. The 
old barrel — shall we rummage it? Old files of 
newspapers, dusty, yellow, a little tattered ! 'Tis 
the ' Columbian Star.' How familiar the type 
looks ! How it reminds you of old times, when you 
looked over the edge of the counter, with the ' Let- 
ters or papers for father !' And these same Stars, 
just damp from the press, were carried one by one 
to the fire-side, and perused and preserved as they 
ought to be. Stars ? Damp ? Ah ! many a star 
has set since then, and many a new-turfed heap 
grown dewy and damp with rain that fell not from 
the clouds. 

Dive deeper into the barrel. There ! A bundle — 
up it comes, in a cloud of dust. Old Almanacs, by 
all that is memorable ! Almanacs, thin-leaved 
ledgers of time, going back to — let us see how far : 
184-, 183-, 182- —before our time— 1 80-, when 



THE OLD GARRET. 209 

our mothers were children. And the day-book — how 
blotted and blurred with many records and many 
tears ! 

There, you have hit your head against that beam. 
Time was, when you ran to and fro beneath it, but 
you are nearer to it now, by more than ' the altitude 
of a copine.' That beam is strown with forgotten 
papers of seeds for next year's sowing ; a distaff, with 
some few shreds of flax remaining, is thrust in a 
crevice of the rafters overhead ; and tucked away 
close under the eaves is ' the little wheel/ that used 
to stand by the fire in times long gone. Its sweet, 
low song has ceased ; and perhaps — perhaps she 
drew those flaxen threads — but never mind— you re- 
member the line, don't you ? 

1 Her wheel at rest, the matron charms no more.' 

"Well, let that pass. Do you see that little craft 
careened in that dark corner ? It was red once ; it 
was the only casket in the house once, and contained 
a mother's jewels. The old red Cradle, for all the 
world ! And you occupied it once : ay, great as you 
are, it was your world once, and over it, the only 
horizon you beheld, bent the heaven of a mother's 



210 JANUARY AND JUNE. 

eyes, as you rocked in that little barque of lovo, on 
the hither shore of time — fast by a mother's love to 
a mother's heart. 

And there, attached to two rafters, are the frag- 
ments of an untwisted rope. Do you remember it, 
and what it was for, and wiio fastened it there? 
'Twas ' the children's swing.' You are here, indeed, 
but w r here are Nelly and Charley ? There hangs 
his little cap by that window, and there the little red 
frock she used to wear. A crown is resting on his 
cherub brow, and her robes are spotless in the better 
land. 



% |alf-|0ttr at t\t ®ttkto. 

Precious little sunlight finds its way into the apart- 
ment where I write, these dark, December days, and 
precious that little is. It falls on the grove across the 
road, sometimes gilds the top of a leafless tree, and 
comes to me second-hand, ' a little the worse for 
wear,' as they say ; but then welcome, very welcome, 
tarnished and tired as it is. Tired? To be sure. 
They talk of sunbeams playing and dancing ; and so 
they may, and so they do, round sparkling fountains. 



A HALF-HOUR AT THE WINDOW. 211 

and over great green billows of foliage, but they do 
nothing of the sort in such times as this. Very sedate 
and well-behaved sunbeams are they indeed, about 
here ! 

Well, yesterday I was writing ; the shadows that 
room with me, lay here and there ; two or three were 
rolled up in the corner ; one stood behind the door, 
close to the wall ; another ill-mannered fellow extended 
itself on the table, and flung its unrustling skirt over 
the very sheet where I was writing. There are 
worse room-mates than shadows, after all. True, 
they leave their clothes lying about any where and 
every where ; but then they never wear boots, never 
make a noise, and are not given to gossipping. 

As I intimated, a few lines ago, I was writing, 
when, all at once, a bright gleam flashed across the 
paper, and was gone. A rare visitor it was, and it's 
no wonder I wondered how it got here. I looked 
up : silent grove ; leafless tree ; nothing more. Re- 
suming the pen, again it came. Pure and beautiful 
enough to have come right from heaven, it seemed. 
Was it a mirror swinging in the wanton wind some- 
where, that flung that ray ? Or a radiant face, such 
as one sees, once or twice in a life-time — not more — 
in the middle of a morning dream ; that one always 



212 JANUARY AND JUNE. 

thinks of, when he sees young and beautiful faces, 
and looks for, but never sees again — never ? 

It was a pleasant thing to muse on ; so I laid down 
the pen, and remembered — that's just the word — 
remembered. One shape melted into another, for 
Memory was playing ' i' the plighted clouds.' 

Another gleam upon the paper, and at the instant, 
a White Wing glanced across the window, on its way 
down to the street. I looked out, and there, sure 
enough, amid the whirling snow, was a white dove. 

Her errand was a beautiful one, no doubt ; seeking, 
perhaps, the wherewith to hush ' the three grains of 
corn, mother,' her little family were plaintively sing- 
ing, some where aloft. Pretty soon, up she came 
again, out of the drifting snow, flinging another ray 
from that white wing as she went. 

Wasn't it a beautiful emblem of a beautiful life ? 
Flinging gladness into sad hearts : glittering upon 
many a trinket of Memory and Yesterday ; beads of 
beauty, shed from a shivered necklace, rolled darkly 
away in the dust, that no hand may thread again, but 
His ' who doeth all things well.' 

The world is full of wings ; every one broad enough 
to bear a sunbeam, and strong enough to fling it into 
some dim window, some gloomy room, some dark 



A HALF-HOUR AT THE WINDOW. 213 

heart, strewn with old hopes, and damp with new 
tears. 

Bliss and blessing, life and light, are all winged. 
No matter for that : they shall be folded by and by, 
where there are no sunbeams to be carried, and there 
is no night at all. 

I laid down the pen, and gazed musingly out into 
the winter, and there, just climbing the hill, was a 
young man, one of our neighbors, " up along," trudg- 
ing through the snow, and carrying, beneath one arm, 
a cradle — a wicker cradle ; just such a cradle as 
makes one think of a little chicken in a basket, a 
little jewel in cotton-wool, or a little baby, or some- 
tiring else little and precious. 

His quickened step, and a sort of semi-elation, semi- 
sheepishness in his looks, told a story for him he 
wouldn't have whispered for twelve dollars a month 
' and found.' That brand-new cradle was for a 
brand-new tenant ; he didn't care who knew that ; 
and he was the father of it — nor that either ; and his 
wife was the mother of it — better than all. But then 
it was his first baby, her first baby, * our ' first baby. 
That he didn't care so much about people's knowing. 
He would a little rather they should think he was 
used to it ; that the old cradle was worn out, or the 



214 JAOTARY AND JUNE. 

other babies tossed in a ' baby jumper,' or any thing 
but the precise truth, no matter what. 

Innocent soul ! He little dreamed his secret was 
out ; ' plain as a pike-staff,' legible as good old Saxon, 
to every body that met him, and thought about it. 

On he went, and I followed him home in thought, 
for the best reason in life — I couldn't help it. And 
there was the baby, sure enough, done up in dimity 
the whitest, trimmed with lace edging the daintiest ; 
little bits of pink shoes on its little bits of pink feet ; 
its eyes all afloat with the unwonted light, ' in a fine 
frenzy rolling,' a dimple on either cheek, a double 
chin, oh ! how fat — and such a head of hair ! To be 
sure, its nose is the least curve in the world puggish ; 
tell it to them if you are tired of life. To be sure, 
its voice is by no means the softest ; hint it, if you 
are shrived. But then it's a baby, in fact the baby, 
and ' a well-spring of pleasure ' it is, indeed. 

And there's the mother, just pale enough to look 
•interesting,' and that I -ask -no -more smile would 
beautify a face colored from the tents of Kedar ; but 
then she isn't homely ; she's handsome ; young 
mothers are always handsome — they can't help it. 

And then it was to be a girl — of course it was ; 
and they had fixed upon a name to hail it by, the 



A HALF-HOUR AT THE WINDOW. 215 

moment it made its debut into breathdom. Many 
was the playful altercation they had had about that 
same name. She declared it should be called Polly, 
after his grandmother ; and he, that no name was so 
beautiful as Lucy — his wife's name, by-the-by ; but 
she conquered, of course ; and one pair of lips, at 
least, was puckered to utter a " Polly, " when lo ! a 
muscular little Hercules of a fellow came plunging 
into being like a quarter-horse, and nameless as a 
young buffalo. What was to be done ? The nomens 
and cognomens of all the uncles, maternal, paternal, 
and doubtful, were catalogued and canvassed ; fore- 
fathers, and more too, were summoned ; but after all, 
just as any body could have told beforehand, she con- 
cluded, new. con., — we should like to see the man 
with a heart to refuse, as she lay there, her hair 

'Brown in the shadow, golden in the sun/ 

flowing over the white pillow, and her soft eyes with 
a new look in them, turned upon her husband — she 
concluded, then, mm. con., to call him — she never 
degraded the boy to a paltry ■ it ' — to call him Frank. 
What'll you wager it wasn't the name of the fa- 
ther? 
Well, by this time they've got the little fellow in 



216 JANUARY AND JUNE. 

his new cradle, and as the mother watches him, she 
weaves a sweet, beguiling song, of what shall he, ■ in 
the good time coming,' when Frank gets to he five ; 
when he gets to he ten ; when he comes to he a man, 
and honors his mother, and ' lives long in the land 
that the Lord ■ shall give him. 

Life is a great poem, and here, rendered into the 
plainest of prose, is the sweetest of its stanzas. 

Night had set in, and still I sat by the window. 

Some body was knocking at the door of a house 
over the way. At the instant, a green blind above, 
just opened a little way, and by the light I caught a 
glimpse of a pair of brilliant eyes, and a flutter of 
something white, and a bird-toned voice softly said, 
1 Who's there?' 'It's me,' was the brief response. 
The eye and the flutter disappeared from the win- 
dow, like stars in a cloud, and I fancied I could hear 
the pattering of two little feet upon the stairs, 
winged with welcome. 

It was a trifle ; it all happened in an instant, but 
it haunted me for an hour-— 4 It's me !' Amid the 
darkness and storm, those words fell upon the quick 
ear aloft, and met a glad response. 

' It's me !' and who was 'me?' The pride of a 
heart's life, no doubt ; the tree a vine was clinging 



A HALF-HOUR AT THE WINDOW. ^17 

to ; the * defender of the faithful,' in the best sense 
of the*term. 

1 It's me !' Many there are who would give half 
their hearts, and more than half the hopes in them, 
for one such recognition in this ' wide, wide world.' 
At the Post Office, abroad, in the wide world, he was 
known as A. B. C, Esq., but on that threshold, and 
within those walls, ' it's me,' and nothing more ; and 
what more is there, one would love to be ? 

Few of all the hearts that beat so wildly, warmly, 
sadly, slowly, but can recognize a true soul amid the 
darkness of the world, in that simple but eloquent 
1 it's me.' As if he had said — 

* Now I am nothing to all the world, 
For I'm all the world to thee.' 

The clock in the distant village strikes ■ ten ;' the 
clouds have cleared away, one after another; the 
frost twinkles through the air; the snow crackles 
under the feet of the brisk pedestrian ; the sleigh- 
runners grate, as they slowly surmount the hill ; 
some overburdened limb in the woods comes crashing 
down in the silence ; there is a drowsy chime of bells 
beyond the Lake ; the landscape is as cold and beau- 
tiful and dumb as a Daguerreotype. 



218 JANUARY AND JUNE. 

How strangely the moon lights up the past ; how 

one can see far-off graves hy its gleam ; how it shines 

through the years that are gone ; how the trinkets of 

memory glitter, when its ray is let in to the heart ; 

how it reveals 

* the tideless shore, 
Where rests the week of Heretofore I* 

i. 

All Heaven is anchored off the world; and every, every 

where, 
The silver surges of the moon make music through the air ; 
As the stars revealed by night, as the dew-drops by the stars, 
So the bosom's wordless wealth, by the moon-beam's misty 

bars. 
Oh ! sunlight for the world of things, but moonlight for the 

heart ! 

From out the dreamy shadows, how the forms of beauty 

start ! 

n. 

How they throng the halls of Thought ! there an Angel-Oxb 

appears ; 
Though I cannot see her clearly by moonlight, and for tears, 
I'd know that foot-fall any where, as light as summer-rain, 
For it sets my pulses playing, as none can do again. 



All ! Thou art there, my Cynosure ! I know those eyes are 

thine ; 
No other pair would ever turn so lovingly to mine: 
And now, a billow of green turf swells breathless o'er her 

rest, 
M if ifc feared to wake the babe that slumbers on her breast; 



A HALF-HOUR AT THE WINDOW 219 



Tho bough was bent to breaking, as the blast went sweep- 
ing by, 
But the nameless bud of beauty was wafted to the sky : 
And thou, fair moon ! art shining on, in all thy glory yet* 
As if upon no fairer brow, no paler seal were set. 



The purling azure ever parts in music round thy prow ; 

As we together saw thee then, so I behold thee now. 

And yet, methinks, thy deck grows dim with gray and 

gathered years ; 
Not so, not so ! untouched by time ! Tis nothing but these 

tears. 

VL 

I wonder not the stars are out, to see thee riding by, 

And not a breath to break the blue of all that blessed sky : 

There's just one cloud in all that dome of God's own starry 

thought- 
One little cloud of Zephyr's fleet, left floating there, forgot. 



Though evening's sun did gild it with glories rich and rare, 
Yet well might Zephyr sigh again, that left that cloudlet 

there ; 
For like a banner weirdly wove in wild Campania's loom, 
That cloudlet's volume swells aloft, as dark and deep as 

doom. 

vm. 
Not all thy glory, gentle Moon 1 can turn that gloom to gold, 
Nor all thy silver lure a star to light a single fold. 
Good night, fair Moon 1 — good night again, pale captive to 
the cloud ; 



220 JANUARY AND JUNE. 

Fve seen a dearer light than thou, extinguished by the 

shroud. 
That cloud is edged with silver now ; its gloom is webbed 

with gold ; 
The stars shine through it every where — a pearl in every 

fold! 



(But | ag*r* 

Rush has just come in with the paper — our paper, 
damp from the press. I love a newspaper — a new 
newspaper, and like to be the first to open it. The 
articles, some how, seem fresher, and wittier, and 
wiser, before * the small folio ' rustles like husks , 
when it comes open silently, and you can fold it pre- 
cisely as you wish, and it stays folded without mur- 
muring. The smell of damp paper and good ink — 
not musty ink — makes one fancy it was printed for 
his particular perusal, and no body's else. 

So another candle is placed upon the stand, the 
arm-chair is whe'eled boldly round in front of the 
fire, two ' letters ' are snuffed from the candles, the 
paper is opened, and I begin to — think. 

The Press ! Orators have lauded, poets sung, but 
it has lost none of its wonder ; it is still a marvel 



OUR PAPER. 221 

and a mystery. Think of it ! That a few quiverings 
of the empty air can float a thought or a feeling from 
mind to mind ; that the blue breakers can throw up, 
as it were into the midst of a heart, a jewel of a 
hope, or fling a star of truth from the breast of a 
billow, into some darkened intellect, is quite strange 
enough for a fairy tale, and yet quite true enough for 
a sermon. But that the footprints of thought can be 
made visible upon the snowy page — that they may 
be traced and retraced, when the Thinker is dead, 
and all but ' the enduring produce ' of his mind, a 
dream — this is more wonderful still. The thought 
that: one has cherished in his bosom, until it bears 
his own mental image, is stamped upon the wing of 
the newspaper, or the page of the volume, as it flut- 
ters from the press, and that thought finds access and 
hearing, where the man himself cannot venture 
Perhaps he is awkward, deformed, a stammerer, and 
a subject of ridicule ; perhaps his garb is coarse, and 
well-worn and patched ; but there stands his Thought, 
in the drawing room, the hall, representative of the * 
better part of him — graceful, elegant, arrayed in 
rich old Saxon, welcomed, listened to, admired every 
where. Perhaps he has never gone beyond the blue* 
verge of vision, whereof his cradle was the centre : 



222 JANUARY AND JUNE. 

but that thought of his, has been borne along earth's 
great rivers on panting steamers, and over God's 
great clearings by locomotives ; even the lightnings 
have forgotten their thunders, and whispered the 
accents of his thought, as they flickered along the 
wire, from mart to hamlet, from hamlet to mart 
again. Perhaps he dies, and the swelling turf sub 
sides above him like a weary wave, leaving no trace 
of his resting place, but that thought lives on. The 
paper is old and torn ; it wears the yellow livery of 
Time ; Time has made it his menial ; but some eye 
shall see it when he is dead ; some memory treasure, 
and some mind admire. Like the bird that went 
forth from the ark, it is returnless ; the music of its 
wing is heard, when the knell for the palsied hand 
that sent it out, has died upon the air : it is immortal. 
Perhaps some nobler mind has divested it of its first 
array, and clothed it in cloth of gold, and transfigured 
and glorified, it still survives, but the same Thought 
still 
% Mighty engine, is that Press, against time. The 
rattle of its machinery seems to me but the first audi- 
ble footfall of thought, on its sublime out-going into 
the world ; its mission unended, till the pitcher is 
broken at the last fountain of human thought, * the 



OUR PAPER. 223 

dust returning to the earth as it was, and the spirit 
unto God who gave it.' 

Why, "by the power of the Press, the steps of mor- 
tality itself are staid, and full-orbed intellects, at the 
word of this Joshua of iron, stand still, and the 
prayer of Telamon's mighty son, 'for light/ is 
answered. 

I do not wonder that the impression of the first 
type, upon the printed page, was crimson . It was but 
the flushing of a new morning, that has dawned upon 
the intellectual world. Oh ! in that black, unseemly 
engine, lies the world's great strength, and Time's 
most formidable foe. 



Lucy, who is trying to ' pick up* a refractory stitch, 
breaks in upon my train of thought, just here, with, 
'Any body married or dead Y Just like a woman ! 

One death ! Little Louise L . 

The ancients used to fancy the fountain of Are- 
thusa could change age into immortal youth and 
beauty ; and though the divinities of the fountain, 
the river and the forest, have passed away, there is 
something attractive in the fancy, and there is hardly 
one who would not rear it into a faith if he could. 



224 JANUARY AND JUNE. 

The fountain of Arethusa may, long ago, have inter- 
mitted, hut the charm it used to wear, like Hope, is 
lingering still. 

There are those who daily find that fountain, and 
are ever young ; the beings that pass away in infancy ; 
that are enshrined in memory ; that smile on us with 
their gentle eyes, from away through the distant 
years; that never grow old, but remain children 
still, though the cradle that rocked, and the roof that 
sheltered, and the bosom that pillowed them, have 
mouldered away. 

How could I help thinking so, when I read the 
brief record that a little being who had filled, we 
know, a large place in more hearts than one, had 
turned cherub ? And I could not help thinking, too, 
that it is hardly a boreavement, after all, that one of 
all our treasures should grow immortal and change- 
less ; one, of all our loves, should triumph over time, 
and shine like a star, amid the clouds of the world, 
with a constant and beautiful light. 

Oh ! many a Louise, to-day, is linking earth to 
heaven ; and who would make the number less ? 
Without a tear, they are awaiting us just beyond the 
azure ; ever young — ever the children we laid them 



our PArER 225 

down- — accepted candidates for the Kingdom of Hea- 
ven. 

* There is no fold, however watched and tended, 

But one dead lamb is there ; 
There is no fireside, howsoe'er defended, 
But hath one vacant chair.* 

Here in the corner — the poet's corner, (why is he 
always set in the corner, like a naughty boy — can 
any body tell?) — are two or three stanzas in little 
type. 

They describe the bright spring days as having 
come, and the cottage door set open wide, and the 
mother sewing within the lonely room, and there 
being nothing to delay her sewing on, because 

'The little hindering thing has gone.' 

It may not so impress you, perhaps, but there is to 
me, in that ' little hindering tiling/ something won- 
derfully suggestive. How it conjures up the memoiy 
of that little voice, those little pattering feet, those 
thousand calls from sleep to sleep again, for this and 
that, so weaving up a mother's life of love, with that 
little being's destiny. 

" Little hindering thing," indeed f The world 



226 JANUARY AND JUNE. 

were better to-day, had there been more things to 
hinder it from growing old — from forgetting tho 
past. 



There is a queer advertisement, just beneath the 
brief announcement of sweet Louise' translation ; and 
it reads thus 

Spirit Baitings. — Communications with the Spirit Land, 
25 cents. 

Haven't we fallen upon wonderful times ? Post- 
age to Heaven only twenty-five cents ! No ferry on 
the Jordan ; no line of telegraph beyond it ; no con- 
tract for carrying the mail that we can read of; and 
yet, for a paltry quarter, here we have ' the latest 
advices' from Hades ! If it were true — if it were not 
a sacrilegious humbug — there certainly would be 
balm and beauty in it. The Rachels of our day 
could ' send a wish and a thought ' after the lispers 
whom ' the Gods loved,' and the Angel in charge, 
would transmit a line or two, in behalf of the little 
Marys and Charleys ' gone on before.' Fatherless 
sons could take counsel of departed sires, and sainted 
mothers recall, in spirit whispers, their errant children 



OUR PAPER 227 

Husbands could waft words of love to the dear ones 
that wandered awhile with them, in disguise ; widows 
could — if they would, for widows are ' wonder- 
fully sustained/ some how, 'in the general.' The 
lover's dream, and the poet's song, would thus he 
realized, and many a welcoming, many a warning 
voice would he wafted across the dark river ; white 
hands would beckon, through the night, to the wait- 
ing this side the water ; happy would he he, who had 
some friend beyond the Jordan, that the tear of part- 
ing here, might brighten in the smile of meeting 
there. The poor washerwoman would consecrate, 
each week, a hard-earned quarter, to hear from little 
Nelly, whose spotless garments were ' washed and 
made white in the blood of the Lamb ;' and the 
appalling waste of nothingness 'twixt this world and 
that, would be bridged for ever. 



'Arrival from California ! A million of gold- 
dust ! Great news from the mines !' And so it runs 
on, in great grenadiers of letters, a regiment of excla- 
mation points bringing up the rear. And so it goes, 
through three mortal columns 



228 JANUARY AND JUNE. 

1 Gold, gold, gold, gold I 
Bright and yellow, hard and cold ; 
Molten, graven, hammered and rolled, 
Heavy to get, but light to hold/ 

And what a list of returned wanderers ! I glance 
rapidly down the A's, the B's, the C's and the D's, 
till here are the S's, but there is no Silas. Silas 
has not come. Wonder if he knows they are waiting 
for him here — a few, a dozen or .so ; for he must 
have found one truth in the Placers : that a man is 
passing rich who can number friends enough for a 
jury. Wonder if he knows that some, two or three 
or so — he is rich, indeed, who can lose two or three 
and not be bankrupt ! — have wearied of waiting, and 
* wrapped the drapery of the couch around them V 

In the midst of the gathering of the clans, en route 
for the land of gold, the air full of farewells to the 
departing, and hundreds of homes made tearful and 
lonely, it is gratifying to hear the cheerful tones of 
greeting, breaking in upon the saddened and subdued 
voices of ' the left behind ;' to see faces kindled with 
the cloudless light of returning joy. Such a sight, 
and such sounds, I witnessed and heard upon the cars 
of the Southern Michigan Road, a day or two since. 
Just in front of me, sat a group that would make a 



OUR PAPER. 229 

picture for a painter. The central figure was a 
woman, a wife and a mother. She was deeply, 
calmly happy. Around her were three children : a 
fine, bright-eyed boy of some twelve years, a girl of 
seven or eight, and a round-faced, chubby little crea- 
ture of golden four. Above them all, towered the 
form of the husband and father. I know he had 
been absent from home for a long time — that he had 
just rejoined his family. One moment he drew the 
boy to him, apparently unconscious of the movement ; 
the next, he was looking at the little one, evidently 
almost a stranger to him, while the round face was 
turned up inquiringly to the bearded stranger ; and 
the next, he had a word for his wife and a glance for 
his daughter, and another tightening of his arm 
round the eldest hope of his house. 

It was a beautiful picture ; more beautiful, indeed, 
than ever came from the airy chambers of a prince 
of the pencil. 

What cared he, what thought he, that the eyes of 
strangers were upon him ? That they could read his 
story ' like a book V That he had been to California, 
that he had been successful ; that he had just re- 
turned ; that he was happy ; that they were happy ; 
there was no mistaking it. 



230 JANUARY AND JUNE. 

May there be many such returns, and greetings, 
and homes, in that silver time, ' by and by/ when 
they all get home, and the unused chairs are brought 
out again, and every place at the old family table is 
filled, and the 'leaf' that has hung so long useless 
by that table's side, is raised once more. 

All get home ! Will they all return ? Will those 
places all be occupied again ? Knells eound softly, 
sadly, from out the years to come, and dimly look 
those days through mists of tears. But there shall be 
gladness too, as sometimes we see, in summer, in tho 
distant fields, and along the slopes. of hills, the sun- 
light brightly resting, while all around us is mantled 
in shadow. The sound of bridal bells, merry bells, 
and merry voices, comes to us from the future, blended 
with the sigh and the knell, and making the music 
of this life of ours. 



1 Exhibition in our school, to-morrow evening !' 
1 Exhibition !' Isn't that a word to conjure with ? 
Doesn't it summon up ' the days that are no more V 

Those first kindlings of emulation ; those tear- 
blotted compositions ; those first mysteries of Euclid ; 
those ludicrous assays in the making of Latin ; the 



OUR PAPER. 231 

teacher's dreaded frown, and his no less coveted smile ; 
those "Wednesday afternoons, when, with clean collars 
and shining faces, we were all ( the orators of the 
day;' those tremblings and palpitations before it 
became ' our turn,' and the flush when the dread artil- 
lery of eyes, from the encouraging look of the teacher 
to the roguish glances of the gleeful girls was levelled 
at us ; — all roguish but one, and that one — who would 
not acquit himself well in her eyes ? — those strolls 
on Saturday ; those first lessons we took in good old 
Isaac Walton's gentle art, in the little creeks that 
glittered like skeins of silver from the hills ; those 
1 black-berryings ' in summer and snowy battles in 
winter ; and, more than all, those hurried pressures 
of hands, and, now and then, of lips maybe, in moon- 
light strolls, and sleighing parties, and the like ; those 
fervent, though evanescent attachments that so devel- 
ope our emotive nature, and after long years of sepa- 
ration and forgetfulness, linger round the heart, like 
the murmur of its ocean home in the sea-shell's 
tinted hall ; these, all these, rush on the thought, and 
make us sigh for those halcyon days when 

1 TVe used to think the forest tops 
"Were close against the sky V 



232 JANUARY AND JUNE. 

And there was the dread ordeal of examination, and 
the last night's exhibition, and the crowded hall, and 
the lights that danced before our eyes, as if keeping 
time with our hopes and hearts— in Memory's eyes 
they are dancing yet ! Then, the excitement over, 
the day of parting came ; all was hurry and bustle ; 
trunks were packed, book-shelves tenantless, drawers 
emptied. There goes the horn ! and the yellow, mud- 
bespattered coach comes rocking up the gravelled 
walk before the door. 

One after another, the little party are seated ; good- 
byes are exchanged ; handkerchiefs waved from win- 
dows and doors, by many a fair little hand ; tears 
are brushed hastily away; a twinge at the heart- 
strings — crack ! goes the driver's whip, and away 
rolls a part of our little w r orld. Another vehicle, and 
another, in turn receive their precious freight. Fare- 
wells grow fainter, the utterance is choked, smiles 
are mockery ; these are parting, to meet no more 
within those pleasant shades — perhaps no more for 
ever. Their last day at school has come, and has 
brought, alas ! what they little fancied — tears. They 
linger longer. All is ready ; the bustle has subsided, 
and they two are alone. They go to take one last 
look at the old room ; they had taken two before ; 



OUR PAPER. 233 

they pass into the chapel, so silent, like a tomb, on 
to their old familiar seat ; a forgotten book lies open 
upon it, they catch the name of its owner, a common 
friend who had left to return no more 

Tears will not be suppressed ; they struggle up ; 
and who would stay them ? They turn away ; they 
part, but not without renewed assurances of remem- 
brance, of correspondence, and of hope that they 
shall meet ; * meet in happier times/ they say. 
Mistaken pair ! there are no happier times this side 
of Heaven ! 



And here is that monthly roll-call — the ' Letter 
List.' 

Some of those, no doubt, whose names swell that 
list, are dead. Some of them were watching from 
beds of pain, this morning's light, as it stole timidly 
through the half-curtained window of the invalid's 
melancholy room. Some of them have gone 'on 
their winding way' over the plains. 

In that column are letters from mothers to child- 
ren, wives to husbands, lovers to lovors. Some of 
them bear black seals, and they who unseal them, 
will unseal too, a fountain of tears. Some of them 



234 JANUARY AND JUNE. 

have been waited for, and wept for, and asked for, 
till hearts grew sick with c hope deferred,' and now 
they have come, at last, and the question is, where 
are the waiters and weepers ? 

What episodes of human life do those letters con- 
tain ! How much of love and hate, of wit and sen- 
timent, joy and grief! How many spirits for many 
a day will take their color from a five minutes' read- 
ing ! Stern Impatience, timid Love, and straightfor- 
ward Business jostle and crowd around the Delivery ! 
There is poetry there, in those little square, triangu- 
lar, oblong, blue, white, and yellow missives, and 
history and biography and philosophy. Sermons and 
songs are turned out from the same leathern recep- 
tacles. 

The breaking of a heart-string costs five cents ; the 
answer of love only half a dime. Joy and grief are 
inventoried alike in this strange schedule of human 
sorrowings and hopes. 



• Last but not least/ the * Leader.' Poor Editor ! 
He has none. I can see him as he ponders and pon- 
ders. \ Is the country safe ?' Then there is nothing 
to be written on * the state of the nation.' Has any 



OUXt PAPER. 235 

gTeat man fallen with the sound of a great tree in 
the forest ? No, and Heaven forhid ! Has any great 
man been bom ? Alas ! great men are not born, 
now-a-days, and if they were, what horoscope have 
Editors, wherewith to divine it ? 

Does the tempest of political conflict gather ? The 
sky is as clear as the great bell of Moscow. True, 
Revolutions are ripening in Europe, but the harvest- 
song is not yet written. True, the "West is a great 
country, Americans a great people, but these truths 
1 have served their time' as leaders, and must needs 
rest. 

All legitimate themes are exhausted — the mails 
bring that dread of the fraternity, * nothing new/ and 
the ink dries upon the waiting pen. 

Were it not the second day of January, he might 
talk of New Year, and express his wishes for the 
prosperity of his patrons ' and the rest of mankind ;' 
but that will not do. Time, like daily papers, re- 
quires but twenty-four hours to be old, and every body 
is moving as steadily on to-day, as if there had not 
been a ' New Year* in a half century. 

Gloster offered a kingdom for a horse. He sym- 
pathizes with him, for he wants " a leader. 9 * Ho 
lays down the pen, lookB listlessly out at the window, 



236 JANUARY AND JUNE. 

and lo ! a leader — one of the world! s leaders, and in 
arms ! A man, ' bearded like the pard,' is hearing 
along the street, a hit of a hoy, he-plumed, he-curled, 
be-plaided, and hlack-eyed, the man's heart — the 
better part of it — personified — himself as he was — 
himself as he ought to he. 

That man ! why a regiment could not drive him, 
but that hoy can guide him. Ah ! he's a leader 
indeed. He fills that man's heart to-day — that fac- 
simile of his hope, is in all his present, and he has 
no future without him. 

The world is filled with such leaders, ' set' in types 
of innocence and beauty, * displayed' in almost every 
home, and * illustrated' by almost every hearth-light. 
Worthy are they of the ■ small caps' they wear. For 
the nonce, they are his leader. God bless the 
leaders ! 



' The Crystal Palace. — Receipts — wonders — 
thousands' — so runs the column 

Temples, a many have been built ; wreathed Co- 
rinthian and solemn Gothic ; simple as the altar of 
Eden's second son ; ornate as the Pantheon of the 
Greek ; to Divinities supernal, infernal, and * mixed ;' 



OUR PAPER. 237 

but only two, and those of Crystal, to the mind- 
directed Hand. True, the 'Hundred-handed' had 
altars and offerings, hut then Briareus was headless. 
True, Hercules was a god of muscles, and had a 
hand of his own, but then there was always a club 
in it ; it was a rude hand, with a Savage for an 
owner. True, Vulcan was a fellow of some sinew 
but his corded arm was always red with the thunder- 
bolts he was shaping. True, Apollo fingered the 
harp now and then, and twanged the silver bow, but 
then, the one he was heir to, and the other he found. 
Not a divinity of them all, could have made either 
of them, Mythology ' to the contrary notwithstand- 
ing.' The fact is, that the Apotheosis of the Hand 
had not taken place in those days. Not a hand of 
them all could have knocked at the closed windows 
of the human soul, and those curtains be withdrawn 
at the signal ; not an arm of them all could have 
been extended, and the fallen * Daughters of Music ' 
be lifted from the dumb dust, into a world trembling 
with harmony. 

And this Palace of Glass — what is it but a 
splendid Retina, whereon are stereotyped myriad 
passages from the eloquent utterances of the human 
hand ? Sweetest song could not wake the sleepers in 



238 JANUARY AND JUNE. 

the tombs of Paria ; but there, around them, within 
those wails of crystal, they stand forth in the day ; 
death without its moulder, life without its motion, 
only waiting the whisper of Omnipotence to breathe, 
and come down from their pedestals, and utter an 
Ionic welcome to the throng. The Hand had rolled 
away the stone from the door of the sepulchre, and 
unravelled with the graver the marble shrouds, and 
gently beat upon the breast till it started an echo 
within, and the muscles rounded anew, and the bo- 
som was like a billow, and the lips parted, and the 
"World listened with their eyes. 

Loftiest eloquence — nay, a Prophet's hallowed lips, 
could not bid the temple-veil of Heaven be rent, that 
the great fabric woven in the loom of God should 
obey, and swing slowly aside. But there, about 
them, are strewn Telescopes, those lidless, tearless, 
sleepless Eyes, the Hand has burnished and brought 
near that dim curtain, and looked through the 
loosely- woven threads, sparkling out -with stars, like 
dews upon the spider's web, and seen the burning 
torches that blaze round the base of the Throne ; seen 
and lived. 

And so, every where beneath that dome, from the 
tapestry, fragrant with its budded flowers, and fhe 



OUR PAPER 239 

Dacca lace of India, the ' woven air' of the Orient, to 
the magic powder that quickens the dull pulses of 
Mother Earth into glowing thoughts of summer, 
and the thing that champs the steel as the fawn 
crops the roses, are evidences of the eloquence of the 
Hand — that true Kaleidoscope of the world, 
wherein fragments the humblest, and material the 
paltriest, become at every motion, new forms of 
beauty, new combinations of power, new aids for 
man, in this Holy Alliance of the Head, the Heart, 
and the Hand. 



'Another Comet/ So our Editor has, at last, 
discovered a Comet in the — neivspapers, and treats 
his readers to a dessert of horrors possible and proba- 
ble, provided, as the lawyers say, the illustrious 
stranger ungallantly comes in collision with our dear, 
dusky Mother. 

What these hirsute foreigners are doing in our of- 
fing, no body precisely, and precisely no body, knows, 
inasmuch as they never send their papers ashore, nor 
take a pilot on board, nor run up a flag, nor fire a 
salute, nor any thing else usual upon the high seas. 

Our Sun with his glorious retinue, is moving among 
the starry isles, in this great Archipelago of God, 



JANUARY AND JUNE. 

towards the dim north-west. And the Sun is a King, 
and the Planets are his train. And who knows that 
these comets are not his couriers, sent out along the 
great highway — sent out, some of them, "before we 
were born ; some of them when time began — re turn- 
ing now and then, with the tidings, * The way is clear ! 
Move on !' And so he does move sublimely on, in an 
orbit, a fragment of whose arc, no human intellect 
has ever grasped. 

Wandering they may be, but ' not lost/ for their 
routes and times — are they not all recorded in the 
books of the Admiralty of high Heaven ? Then, 
here's to 

Ef)t Xeto €raft in tje (teftiins. 

'Twas a beautiful night on a beautiful deep, 
And the man at the helm had just fallen asleep, 
And the watch of the deck, with his head on his breast, 
"Was beginning to dream that another's it pressed, 
"When the look-out aloft cried, 'A sail! ho! a sail!' 
And the question and answer went rattling like hail: 
*Asail! ho! a sail!' 'Where away?' 'No'th-no'th-west?' 
'Make her out? 1 ' No, your honor !' The din drowned the 
rest. 

There, indeed, is the stranger, the first in these seas, 
Yet she drives boldly on, in the teeth of the breeze. 
Now her bows to the breakers she steadily turns : 
Oh! how brightly the light of her binnacle burns! 
Not a signal for Saturn this Rover has given, 
No salute for our Venus, the flag-star of heaven ; 



OUR PAPER. 241 

Not a rag or a ribbon adorning her spars, 
She has saucily sailed by 'the red planet Marsj^ 
She has * doubled/ triumphant, the Cape of the Sun, 
And the sentinel stars, without firing a gun ! 
Now, a flag at the fore and the mizzen unfurled, 
She is bearicg right gallantly down on the world ! 
' Helm a-port !' ' Show a light! She will run us aground !' 
'Fire a gun!' 'Bring her to!' 'Sail a-hoy! "Whither 
bound V 

'Avast there ! ye lubbers ! Leave the rudder alone : 
'Tis a craft ' in commission' — the Admiral's own ; 
And she sails with sealed orders, unopened as yet, 
Though her anchors she weighed before Lucifer set ! 
Ah ! she sails by a chart no draughtsman could make, 
Where each cloud that can trail, and each wave that can 

break ; 
Where each planet is cruising, each star is at rest, 
With its anchor ' let go' in the blue of the blest; 
Where that sparkling flotilla, the Asteroids, lie, 
Where the scarf of red Morning is flung on the sky; 
Where the breath of the sparrow is staining the air — 
On the chart that she bears, you will find them all there ! 
Let her pass on in peace to the port whence she came, 
With her trackings of fire, and her streamers of flame 1 



But there is a brace of ' coffins' in the candles ; 
the back-stick has fallen to pieces ; the frost is creep- 
ing up the window-panes ; the two hands of the 
clock are pointing the way to Heaven ; the paper has 
rustled down to my feet ; so — Good Night ! 



212 JANUARY AND JUNE. 



The other day I shot into town, on the Michigan 
Southern Railway Train. The engine was well- 
named — Flying Cloud ; for a flying cloud it was, 
scudding before the magical tempest, through the 
woods and round the sweeping shores of old Michi- 
gan. 

And a wonderful thing is that Engine, when we 
think of it ; the emblem and exponent of the hour ; 
the thing of iron and of fire ; with a banner of light 
and an eye like a star ; with sinews of brass and 
steel ; and breathings of flame. It is impatient to 
go forth to battle. It glides upon those two iron 
bars, the noblest couplet of the age, from winter to- 
summer ; from day to night ; from morning to even- 
ing. 

It gives the river a holiday, and drives on regard- 
less of its flow ; it plunges like a strand of thunder 
through the mountain gorge ; it pants around the 
wide world. Its shafts glitter in the mines ; its voice 
is heard in the shops ; its banner is every where. It 
has forced its way to the far hamlets in the quiet 



RIDING ON A HAIL. 243 

vales, and they have felt the thrill and the jar of the 
great world. 

Those quiet, little nestling-places where we were 
born, are fast disappearing. The hill, where the 
long summer afternoons and we used to lie, and 
while they gilded the clouds that went floating "by, 
we glorified them — that hill has been graded down, 
and the cars now thunder along, where breezes swept 
before. 

The grove, where first we learned to build our 
castles in air, where every mossy tree had a name 
and a memory, some Vandal hand has felled to feed 
the hungry Engine. 

Sublunary creation goes drifting by at thirty miles 
an hour, and they are crowding away the past, with 
its memories and its hallowed spots, its homes, its 
altars, and its groves, to make room for the future, 
that comes thundering on by steam. 

Japhet passed a life in search of his father ; the 
old world sought a new route to the Indies ; modern 
science is groping 'mid blinding snows and howling 
winters, for a northwest passage, and by and by, some 
man, wiser than Zimmerman, will be seeking a place 
whose echoes were never wakened by the snort of 
steam ; that was never trenched with a canal, nor 



244 JANUARY AND JUNE. 

webbed with a Telegraph — shall seek, but never find, 
till that house, the Gra^e-digger tells of, shall open to 
receive him. 

Iron and Fire are achieving new triumphs, every 
day, over those twin foes of man, Time and Space. 

Triumphs ? You need not look for them where 
men are binding broad continents with clampings of 
iron. You can find them in the veriest trifles. Here 
now, they tell us, a bunch of flowers w T as sent from 
New- York in an exhausted case, to the World's Fair 
in London, and after a lapse of three months, were as 
beautiful as when they bloomed in the Eden of the 
West. This statement met your eyes ; you passed it 
over, forgot it. But here is the same fact, in another 
expression : Time challenged man to preserve even 
the flowers unwithered, and from month to month, 
they had faded and faded, in mockery of human 
power. It was even deemed a wonder when an 
American lady in London decked her hair with leaves 
flushed with the sunset of the year, in the forests of 
the new World — withered leaves, and nothing more. 
Space interposed his waste of waters, and said, remove 
those flowers from their parent stems, and if Time 
does not wither them at first, yet you shall bear them 
to their destination, dead flowers at last. Man ac- 



RIDING ON A RAIL. 245 

cepted that challenge, and he has come off victor. 
Here now is a Bouquet sent from the new world to 
the old — nothing more — and yet how many hours of 
thought, and years of toil, were necessary that it 
might be done. How the chemist sought to unweave 
the blue robe of air ; how the philosopher proved it 
an ethereal sea, and manned the pumps in its clear 
depths, and created a vacuum, Nature's old abhor- 
rence. How the miner delved, the furnace glowed, 
the blacksmith wrought, until that human engine 
waved round the steamer's wheels with its iron wand. 
And all this, before that floral gem plucked from the 
bosom of the New World, all warm and fragrant with 
her breath, could bloom awhile in the Crystal Palace 
of the British Isles. Oh ! this is a trifle indeed, but 
it reveals the tide and turn of the battle. 

It is wonderful how that hissing, panting, shrieking 
thing of iron, bears us all, not only away from home, 
but away from childhood, memory, and yesterday. 

The past is left behind, and forgotten, and blushed 
for ; but what of that ? The past is dead ; * Let 
the dead past bury its dead.' Homes are desecrated, 
deserted, destroyed ; but what of that ? They were 
humble and old — there are better to come. Many a 
sweet flower of memory and affection is trampled and 



246 JANUARY AND JUNE 

crushed beneath the iron heels and hurrying feet of 
an iron age ; but what are flowers, but the fancy- 
work of Nature's holidays? Childhood with its 
sweet borderings of morning, is stricken from the 
calendar ; but what of that ? Childhood, sweet 
pause, as it is, upon the threshold of life, with its 
foolish memories of fond mothers and doting fathers, 
and old songs, and the trees that bore our names, and 
the rooms where we were cradled, and the cots where 
we were born, and our little world within the hori- 
zon's azure ring : what are these to us ? The trees 
are withered and felled ; the roof-tree is mossy, and 
humble and old ; the songs are mute like ' the harp 
in Tara's halls ;' and the mothers, God grant they all 
are not dead ! That ' good time coming ' must have 
been sung, at last, to the brink of being born. "What 
have we to do with trifles such as these ? "VVe are 
men and women, warriors all ; we are practical 
people, wise people, we of this age, in the midst of 
the battle ; we have put away flowers, and fancies, 
and memories, and the past, with the trinkets — the 
rattle and the straw that pleased us then — among the 
idle rubbish of the brain. We are children no more. 
And we have come out, like the Trojan Prince from 



RIDING ON A RAIL. 247 

burning Troy, but unlike him, we have left our 
' household gods ' behind us. 

A watch- word is abroad. It has passed from leader 
to leader, and down and along the rank and file of the 
world. The world ! And what a brigade the world 
makes ! Here is no paltry centurion's command, but 
nations by battalions, generations by squadrons. How 
sublimely they are moving ! Away on in the van, is 

4 Bright Improvement on the car of Time.' 

I see the Lion of England, and the Lilies of France, 
and the Stork of old Holland, and the Eagle of Co- 
lumbia, blazoned upon their banners, and waving in 
the full noon of the age. One after another, tribes 
and tongues from under the whole Heaven, have 
fallen into line. The turbaned Turk has left his otto- 
man; the islands of the sea, with their gentle child- 
ren, have taken up the march; the intermitting 
heart of old Europe, beats a salute, like the sound of 
a stream in an ancient cave, as the world goes by, 
and even * the drowsy East ' has looked out from its 
windows of sunrise. On they move to the magic of 
that word * Progress.' There is no Rubicon, but the 
Caesars are not extinct. Scouts boldly plunge into 
Ihe shadows of the Future, take captive mornings 



248 JANUARY AND JUNE, 

yet to be, and return with them to the advance guard 
of this mighty armament, and so it is, that in these 
days, ' other morns have risen upon mid-noons.' 

1 Close up !' ' Close up !' rings along the nations 
I seem to hear it now, as in all languages and lands ; 
the w r ord is speeding on. The sturdy Saxon utters it x 
and its echo rings like ' England's morning drum-heat ' 
round the world. The Greek amid his fallen tern 
pies, catches and prolongs it ; from tongue to tongue, 
till it swells like a sigh, from the empty, dusty cradle 
of old Egypt. On moves the column, through the 
web of years, like the shuttle in the hand of the 
weaver. 

It was not a trumpet that thus rallied the world, 
but the shrill whistle of that iron Boatswain, the 
Steam Engine. 

And there it stands, at once the creation and the 
rival of the hand ; that has passed on with its freight 
of humanity, beyond the uttermost station ; that, with 
soulless sinew, makes Mechanic Man a supernume- 
rary ; even he, who c laid hands ' upon stubborn iron, 
polished steel and gleaming brass, till, as with * touch 
ethereal,' the metal caught the ' cunning ' of the fin- 
gers. The Steam Engine is a monster. He tortures 
the wave into energy and strength ; he breathes out 



WINTER NIGHTS. 249 

its shrieking spirit in a cloud, and man, the being with 
the hand, stands appalled in the presence of the 
genius he has conjured. Next comes the Caloric 
Engine, a thing like the other, dug from the mine, 
and shaped by the altar-light of forges, hut no mon- 
ster — not it; for it presses hard towards humanity's 
self. It has lungs of iron, indeed, and no delicate 
leaves of red life ; but then it is the calm, blue air we 
breathe, that fills its ponderous cylinders ; it is nearer 
human than its panting predecessor, and who shall 
say, not a more formidable rival ? 



Mhxttt |ng&ts. 

Ugh ! What a night last night was, to be sure — 
the waltz of the wind and the drifts. 

A huge snow-batik of a cloud lay along the west at 
sunset — an aerial Onalaska — and white, frosty puds 
came out of a clear, blue cleft in the keen north- 
east. 

That wind ! Didn't it love snow, and hadn't it 
queer ways of its own ? Now it came from beyond 
the wood, sighing and sobbing like a penitent. Then 



250 JANUARY AND JUNE. 

it struck the poor, dumb, leafless trees, till they 
creaked and groaned like a forest of masts in a storm ; 
but it was tuning up the mighty harp for an Anthem — 
nothing more. And there's the deep, pedal bass for 
you : feathery pines, stubborn oaks, swaying elms 
and whispering hemlocks, all touched into a grand 
harmony, by the hand of a master. 

Then it whistled through the orchard, like the 
whirl of a lash ; then it moaned down in the valley ; 
then it roared and rumbled over the chimney-tops, 
and the little, timid flames lay flat upon the half- 
burned wood, till it passed ; then it tried the doors 
and rattled the windows, and shook the curtains, and 
shrieked round the corners like a fiend, and moaned 
over the threshold like a foundling, and piped through 
the key-hole like a boatswain ; then it leaped up like 
a giant, and tossed the old butternut like a fury, and 
died down again like an infant. 

Love the snow ? Indeed it did ! It bundled it in 
fence-corners, to see how it would look, and heaped it 
in the highway, and took it up, and carried it a little 
farther, and down it went in a lull. In an instant it 
flew with it over the top of the house, and waltzed 
away with it over the corn-field, and whirled it up 
against the old barn, and sifted it through on to the 



WINTER NIGHTS. 251 

hay, and flung it over the wood-pile, and drifted it up 
on to the window-sills. And the hovels it crept into, 
and the secrets it found out, that the neighbors never 
knew ! It rustled a bed, and discovered it was 
nothing but straw. It drifted down upon a hearth, 
and the ashes mocked it, so cold and white were they. 
There was no fire there ! And it found an infant 
asleep upon its mother's breast, by the road-side, and 
the mother was dead ; and it froze the tear upon the 
baby's cheek, that it should not fall to the earth, and 
it whirled a wreath of snow over the twain, and it 
went sighing on its way, like one who would not be 
comforted. 

And what a time it had in the grave-yard, furrow- 
ing it all over with white billows, filling up the hol- 
lows, and tumbling this way and that, and rocking 
the willows, and swinging in the old maples. Then 
up it went, and waked the old church-bell from its 
slumbers, till there came out of the belfry a solemn 
tone, that blended with the blast as it swept by. 
Back to the house again, and how it shrieked through 
the garret, and rattled the loose boards upon the 
gables, and puffed out the smoke in the fire-place, 
and died meekly away, and sung softly through the 
crevice3, and was still. 



252 JANUARY AND JUNE. 

Then it swept out of the " Oak opening," on to the 
Prairie, and flung to a blind, where one lay languish- 
ing, and fanned an ember that had fallen into a cre- 
vice of the floor, and closed a door that had stood 
ajar, lest some body might see, and blew it up into a 
brave flame, and flared it this way and that, and went 
crashing on, ' into the heavy timber,' and was gone. 

How they heaped up the fire, and drew out the 
glowing coals from beneath the fore-stick, and shook 
out the folds of the curtains before the windows, and 
snuffed the candles anew, and made it as cheerful as 
they could. Festoons of dried pumpkin adorned the 
ceiling ; skeins of yarn decorated the window-frames ; 
a bowl of red-cheeked apples, and a pitcher of cider, 
stood on the hearth in one comer ; the hired man was 
asleep in the other ; the wee ones were cracking but- 
ternuts, mother was knitting — she's alivays knit- 
ting — and father was dozing over ' the state of the 
nation' as set forth in the ' Repnblica?i Times' One 
of the boys was telling an incident of the day : the 
hunters had been out, and the music of the hounds 
had been ringing all day through the woods. They 
had started a hapless deer, and hard-pressed by the 
dogs, panting and wearied, it was rushing by, where 
the hired man had just felled a tree, when, quick as 



WINTER NIGHTS. 253 

thought, it turned, tumbled breathless at his feet, and 
with a mute eloquence that passes speech, it claimed 
his protection. The baying of the hounds came 
nearer and nearer — there it lay, supplicating and 
helpless. 'And what did Joe do, do you think,' asked 
the young narrator, growing earnest with indigna- 
tion — * why, he just killed it with his axe ! He 
offered me a haunch, if I would bring it home. Won- 
der if he thought I'd touch it. Such a fellow would 
rob his own father !' 

Mack, curled up on the hearth, was propounding 
venerable riddles, the heir-looms of childhood, to a 
weather-bound school-mate ; such as 'round the house 
and round the house, and pop behind the door.' ' Do 
you know what it is ? I'll bet you don't,' triumph- 
antly exclaims the little fellow. 

' I gueth,' says the little guest — ' I gueth it'th the 
dark !' ■ I knew you couldn't. Why, it's a broom — 
that's all, — -I gueth it'th the dark !' and the young 
propounder laughed outright at the idea. * House full, 
hole full, can't catch a bowl-full !' * Oh, I know 
that ! It'th thmoke !' 

And so, with childish prattle and sweet content, the 
evening went away, as many an evening has done, 
never to return. 



254 JANUARY AND JUNE. 

The circle gradually narrows round the fire. At 
last, they are all gone hut you. Even Lucy has let 
out her ■ intended,' as the neighbors call him, at the 
front door, and comes into the kitchen with very red 
cheeks, and shy as a "bird. She glances at the clock, 
bounds away with a laugh, and now you hear her 
light, merry step, as she trips up stairs to the music 
of her own sweet thoughts. 

You open the hall door ; a great gust puffs out 
the light, but by the flashes of the fire, you see two 
long, narrow drifts of fme snow, that have sifted 
through the crevices round the outer door. 

The wind has sighed itself to sleep, like a tired 
child, and soft, sweet tones of music seem to rise and 
fall in the snowy air. Now receding, now approach- 
ing ; now dying, now swelling like a great iEolian. 
And it is an iEolian : that mighty harp with a single 
string, the Telegraph. And the fingers of the w r ind, 
in gentler mood, are twanging a lullaby to the storm. 
Oh ! mighty Harper is the Wind, and here is an 
instrument worthy of its handling : an orbit wherein 
the dumb thunder-bolt is hurled from mart to mart ; 
a bolt that, like the thunder of Sinai, has grown 
articulate. It is the pulse of the world ; the fibre of 
universal thought. 



WINTER NIGHTS. 255 

There, now, a'wanderer from the land of gold has 
returned to New- York. It is morning. The clock is 
on the stroke of eight. Day has risen from the wave, 
and in his chariot of fire, has gone on towards the 
west, making his rounds of the globe. He has "been 
gone a half hour. The glad word conveying the 
intelligence of that wanderer's arrival, has been com- 
mitted to the telegraph. On it glides westward, 
westward still. Roll on, thou glorious chariot of 
day ! The courier of love shall o'ertake thee yet. 
Nearer, nearer; the day and those words are side 
by side. The sun is distanced — is left behind — and 
the quivering lightning flutters in at the windows on 
Main Street, like some sweet bird 

* Let loose in eastern skies.' 

And it is not yet eight of the clock in La Porte! 
So a few humble, loving syllables, that are nothing 
to you or to me, lead the great sun in his journey 
round the world. 



The Child- world, in this quarter, is in * an active 
state of unrest.' The school in * the Quaker neigh- 
borhood ' have sent a challenge, in due form, to this 



256 JANUARY AND JUNE. 

district, to spell ; so, to-night, ' the war of words' is to 
be waged, in the white school-house on the hill. 

There is a great overhauling of old ' E lenient aries/ 
and a wonderful furbishing up of frontispieces, and 
turning over of clean collars, preparatory to the grand 
melee. 

Spelling Schools ! Have you forgotten them ? 
When, from all the region round about, they gathered 
into the old log school-house, with its huge fireplace, 
that yawned like the main entrance to Avernus. 
How the sleigh-bells — the old-fashioned bells, big in 
the middle of the string, and growing ' small by 
degrees and beautifully less ' towards the broad, brass 
buclde-^chimed, in every direction, long before night — 
the gathering of the clans. There came one school, 
1 the Master ' — give him a capital M, for he is entitled 
to it — Master and all, bundled into one huge, red, 
double sleigh, strown with an abundance of straw, 
and tucked up like a Christmas pie, with a half score 
of buffalo robes. There half a dozen ' cutters,' each 
with its young man and maiden, they two and no 
more. And there, again, a pair of jumpers, mount- 
ing a great, outlandish-looking bin, heaped up, 
pressed down and running over, Scripture measure, 
with small collections of humanity, picked up en 



WESTER NIGHTS 257 

route, from a great many homes, and all as merry as 
kittens in a basket of wool. And the bright eyes, 
and ripe, red lips, that one caught a glimpse of, 
beneath those pink-lined, quilted hoods, and the sil- 
very laughs that escaped from the woolen mufflers 
and fur tippets they wore then— who does not remem- 
ber ? — who can ever forget them ? 

The school house destined to be the arena for the 
conflict, has been swept and garnished ; boughs of 
evergreen adorn the smoke-stained and battered walls. 
The little* -pellets of chewed paper have been all 
swept down from the ceiling, and two pails of water 
have been brought from the spring, and set on the 
bench in the entry, with the immemorial tin-cup — 
a wise provision indeed, for warm work is that 
spelling ! 

The * big boys' have fanned and replenished the 
fire, till the old chimney fairly jars with the roaring 
flames, and the sparks fly out of the top, like a fur- 
nace — the orifiamme of the battle. 

The two ' Masters' are there ; the two schools are 
there ; and such a hum, and such a moving to and 
fro ! "Will they swarm ? 

The oaken ferule comes down upon the desk with 
emphasis. What the roll of the drum is to armies. 



258 JANUARY AND JUNE. 

that, the 'ruler* is to this whispering, laughing, 
young troop. 

The challenged are ranged on one side of the 
house ; the challengers on the other. Back seats, 
middle seats, low, front seats, all filled. Some of the 
fathers and grandfathers, who could, no doubt, upon 
occasion, 

* Shoulder the crutch, and show how fields were won,' 

occupy the bench of honor near the desk. 

Now for the preliminaries : the reputed best speller 
on each side ■ chooses.' ' Susan Brown !' Out comes 
a round-eyed little creature, blushing like a peony. 
Who'd have thought it ! Such a little thing, and 
chosen first. 

'Moses Jones!' Out comes Moses, an awkward 
fellow, with a shock of red hair, shockingly har- 
vested, surmounting his broad brow. The girls laugh 
at him, but what he doesn't know in the ' Element- 
ary,' isn't worth knowing. 

1 Jane Murray !' Out trips Jane, fluttered as a 
bride, and takes her place next to the caller. She's 
a pretty girl, but a sorry speller. Don't you hear the 
whispers round the house ? ' Why, that's John's 
sweetheart. ' John is the leader, and a battle lost 



WINTER NIGHTS. 259 

with Jane by his side, would be sweeter than a vic- 
tory won, without her. 

And so they go on, ' calling names,' until five or 
six champions stand forth ready to do "battle, and the 
contest is fairly begun. 

Down goes one after another, as words of three 
syllables are followed by those of four, and these 
again, by words of similar pronunciation and divers 
significations, until only Moses and Susan remain. 

The spelling-book has been exhausted, yet there 
they stand. Dictionaries are turned over — memories 
are ransacked, for 

'Words of learned length and thundering sound/ 

until, by and by, Moses comes down like a tree, and 
Susan flutters there still, like a little leaf aloft, that 
the frost and the fall have forgotten. 

Polysyllable follows polysyllable, and by and by 
Susan hesitates just a breath or two, and twenty 
tongues are working their way through the labyrinth 
of letters in a twinkling. Little Susan sinks into the 
chink left for her on the crowded seat, and there is a 
lull in the battle. 

Then, they all stand in solid phalanx by schools, 
and the struggle is, to spell each other down. And 



260 JANUARY AND JUNE. 

down they go, like leaves in winter weather, and the 
victory is declared for our District, and the school is 
1 dismissed.' 

Then comes the hurrying and bundling, the whis- 
pering and glancing, the pairing off and the tumbling 
in. There are hearts that flutter and hearts that 
ache ; ' mittens' that are not worn, secret hopes that 
.are not realized, and fond looks that are not returned. 
There is a jingling among the bells at the door ; one 
after another the sleighs dash up, receive their nest- 
ling freight, and are gone. 

Our Master covers the fire, and snuffs out the £an* 
dies — don't you remember how daintily he used to 
pinch the smoking wicks, with fore-finger and thumb, 
and then thrust each hapless luminary, head first, 
into the tin socket ? — and we wait for him. 

The bells ring faintly in the woods, over the hill, 
in the valley. They are gone. The school house is 
dark and tenantless, and we are alone with the night. 

Merry, care-free company ! Some of them are 
sorrowing, some are dead, and all, I fear, are changed. 
Spell ! Ah ! the * spell' that has come over that 
crowd of young dreamers — over you, over me — will 
it ever, ever be dissolved ? In ' the white radiance 
of Eternity !' 



WINTER NIGHTS. 261 

How, like the shadow upon the dial, thought 13 
over returning to the place of beginning ! Where we 
first began to live — where we first began to love ; to 
the trysting-place and the homestead, the play-ground 
and the grave-yard: 

The Children of the Sun, where'er they roam, 
Deem that the Gods to them, this boon have given, 
That each freed spirit seeks its native home, 
And wings from thence, a speedier flight to Heaven. 

As some dim fountain — when day's golden chain 
Leads captive, earth — unfolds its cloudy wings, 
Sublimely seeks its native heaven again, 
And o'er the sun, its rainbow glory flings ; 

So when thy memory beams upon the thought, 
Its pinions tremble for the homeward flight ; 
O'er many a hallowed, many a heavenly spot, 
It lingers long — 'tis lingering there to-night 

It were not strange, if 'neath some sacred shade, 
A tear should glitter on thy billowed breast ; 
It were not strange, if o'er the buried dead, 
Some heart should sigh, Here let me be at rest ! 

Home ! ever Home ! How glides the bird-like thought 
Back to the roof-tree where it plumed its wing, 
Ere tears had stained it, or the tempest caught 
And atrown the bower, where first it learned to sing. 



262 JANUARY AND TOOT!. 



®[u fast fff %tn. 

While I write, a strange, sad scene is being enacted, 
one which hangs over the mind, as I think of it, a 
sombre cloud of thought. A noble being, in the full 
maturity of life, is nearing the last hours of his exist- 
ence, and from present indications, * by the turn of 
the tide/ to-night, he will cease to be a mariner of 
lift. 

To see the strong limbs settle into the repose of 
death, is sad at any time, but there are circumstances 
connected with this, which invest it with an unwonted 
and melancholy interest. 

He is the last of Ten, who, within a single year, 
have died, one after another, and but a little while — 
a few days apart ! I remember them all ; I knew 
them well, and many a day have I passed with them 
during this eventful year. First (I will not mention 
names,) an old man died ; but his locks were white, 
and his pulses chilled, and the tears of the mourners 
fell slow and freezingly round the shallow grave. 
The old, like withered leaves, hold to life by a frail 
tenure : there comes a husky breath, and they are 



THE LAST OP TEN, 263 

gone. Next went his brother, youngei than he, a 
man of a cold, stern spirit ; but he had friends — and 
who has not ? — and so he died. And then a change 
came over a younger member of the family — a wild, 
boisterous, dashing blade, the musician of the group. 
He would have made a * Kong's Trumpeter;' and 
what blasts I have heard him sound ! Such blasts 
as Scott said ' were worth a thousand men.' And I 
have heard him play dirges too. They played for 
him at last. ■ The daughters of music are brought 
low,' and he sleeps. His gentle sisters three, as if 
they knew the way he led, by the tones of his spirit- 
bugle, followed him, one after one. 

hark ! hear ! how thin and clear, 
And thinner, clearer, further going I 
O sweet and far, from cliff and star, 
The horns of Elfland faintly blowing I 
Blow, let us hear the purple glens replying: 
Blow, bugle ; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying. 

' love, they die in yon rich sky, 

They faint on hill, or field or river ; 
Our echoes roll from soul to soul, 
And grow forever and forever. 
Blow, bugle, blow, set the wide echoes flying, 
And answer, echoes, answer, dying, dying, dying.' 

The youngest went first ; innocence knows no fear, 
and she passed away smiling — a gentle creature, full 



264 JANUARY AND JUNE. 

of laughter and tears. The second and third — how 
well do I remember the last time I saw them ! 
They were dressed in flower-broidered robes, flowers 
in their hair, the tint of flowers upon their cheeks, 
and the fragrance of flowers in their breath. They 
wore broidered girdles of green, and they were all of 
a flutter, going to some fete. But they have gone 
together, and almost hand in hand, where flowers 
bloom all the year long, and where it is one grand 
fete from June to June again. 

Then came one whom the heart aches to think of ; 
a magnificent being, fully rounded into womanhood. 
With eyes that looked into the soul, as warm, and 
clear, and noble as a summer Heaven ; with a voice 
full of sweetest music, and with grace in every motion. 
Living, who could help loving her ? — and dying, who 
could help weeping for her ? — I am not ashamed to say 
it, I wept ; I am not afraid to tell it, Nature wept ; I 
am not wild to fancy it, Heaven smiled, when she 
awaited admission on its star-lighted threshold. 

But I haven't the heart to recall them all to-day 
Enough to say, they are dead ; the tenth is now 
dying, and they will all be a family in Heaven. 
"Who is there among my readers to give a tear or a 
thought to poor, departing October ? 



SHADOWS WE ARE. 265 



Shadows that out-live the sunshine, daguerreotypes 
8-e. I have been looking at one to-night — a picture 
of the dead. Dead ? Oh, no ! — that cannot be dead 
that we cannot forget. 

Well do I remember when it was taken — a tearful 
April day ; showers came out of the rainbows, and 
sunshine broke out of the clouds. Fitting emblem of 
her little life, and yours, and mine. They arrayed 
her in a white robe, folded her white hands upon her 
breast, wreathed white roses in her hair, and made 
her as ready as they could for the angels that waited 
without. There she lay, cold and motionless, but 
none of us could make her dead. Again and again, 
did I bring a mirror close to those sealed lips ; once 
or twice, I fancied its surface was a little dimmed, 
but it was not so. There was the dear, pale face, 
nothing more. That little cloud of life had floated 
away for ever. Sleep and his brother had stood 
beside the couch, to claim her as she lay. Both won 
her, for she slept the sleep of death. 

Oh, she was lovely ! and as those fair lineaments 
settled to their last repose, it made the heart ache and 
the eye dim to look at them. How much there is in 
the thought, we shall see her like no more ; mingled 



266 JANUARY AND JUNE. 

with her kindred elements, her dust shall be strown 
to the winds. Her image is pictured now upon tho 
heart, but hearts may break, memory be dimmed with 
tears and time. Had we but thought of this, the 
artist should have made her live upon his canvass. 
Such beauty should not quite depart. Too late — too 
late! 

Far over the waters, in sunny France, in a labora- 
tory, a workman is bending over a crucible and a fur- 
nace. Begrimmed with toil, nameless, the utterer of 
a language not our own. What is he to us, or we to 
him ? Kothing. 

It was morning, and through the half-drawn cur- 
tain, round that bed of death, a bright ray of sun- 
shine streamed full upon the face of the dead, and 
grew pale — and well it might, for it was in the 
presence of Him who shall one day bid the sun put 
off his robes of glory for the garment of sackcloth — 
an instant fell, and then was flying out again into the 
free, glad gush of morning, and the music of the 
woods and the birds. 

A polished plate — a magical mirror, just stayed it 
in its flight, and ere it fled, it left thereon the sweet 
memory it was flying with — the picture of the Dead. 
The eyes were closed, 'tis true, but then she looked so 



TIME INDICTED. 267 

sweetly sleeping there. Many times since, be sure, 
it has been bedewed with tears ; many times since, 
have lips been pressed upon it. 

Radiant being ! beautiful May ! She flung but one 
shadow, and that only, when she died. 

You have seen, sometimes, in a June morning, 

when the birds were in song and the breezes in tune, 

a sentinel star, that had out-watched the night, 

lingering on the bright threshold of day. You have 

watched it as it wavered and grew dim ; as it bright* 

ened and blushed ; as it paled into pearl, receded, and 

died. 

The sky was all beauty, the world was all bliss — 
Oh 1 who would not pray for an ending like this ? 
80 my beautiful May passed away from life's even ; 
So the blush of her being was blended with heaven ; 
So the bird of my bosom fluttered up to the dawn— 
A window was opened — my darling was gone ! 
A truant from time, from tears, and from sin, 
For the angel on watch took the wanderer in. 



What an indictment could be 'found' against 
Time, if only he came within the jurisdiction of mor- 
tals. 'Count' after 'count' — how they follow one 
another. 

Time has robbed youth of its gtdp df lightness and 



268 JANUARY AND JUNE. 

its locks of gold, and its "bounding heart of bliss. He 
has lifted Heaven away from us, as we have stood up 
in the full stature of men ; for to this the poet testi- 
fied, when he said, 

* It gives me little joy, 
To think I'm farther off from Heaven, 
Than when I was a boy.' 

He has rohhed manhood of its form erect, its eagle 
look, and its soldier tread. He has stolen "beauty, 
line after line, and light after light, from the lips, the 
cheek, the "brow of loveliness. 

He has chilled the warmest pulses, dimmed the 
brightest visions, paralyzed the strongest hand, that 
ever throbbed with sympathetic pain, or swept the 
dismal horizon of human sorrow, or struck for God 
and the right. 

He has effaced the inscriptions that love and 
memory have traced. 

He has shrivelled and obliterated our parchments. 

He has struck from the roll, names that were born 
to a good hope of immortality. 

He has crumbled the walls of our old homesteads. 

He has ' changed ' the faces of our old friends. 

He has made life too long for our hopes, but toe 
brjef for our deeds 



TIME CONDEMNED. 269 

He has substituted the new for the old ; the things 
of to-day for the things of yesterday and for ever. 

And how have the architect, the painter, and the 
poet been battling against grim, relentless Time ? 
Go to Bunker's Hill, and ask them, ' "What build ye 
now V and they answer, ' Here swelled the first strain 
of Liberty's Anthem — here Warren fell — here one 
day in June, three quarters of a century ago — why it 
is Bunker Hill Monument !' So, indeed, it is ; but 
look at that mighty shaft, as it sublimely swings to 
die rising and setting sun. I tell you, it is more. 
You see there a fortress, a stronghold against Time. 
1 How the years drift over the world,' they said — they 
that stood around that crimsoned height. * Those 
years will sweep the red record of the deed away.' 
Time will do it, and the memory of that grand act 
shall be struck from the drama of our race. Not so — 
not so. "We will pile up the granite ; we will stereo- 
type the story ; we will emboss it upon the page of 
the globe ; we will build a citadel — aye, that's the 
word ! — a citadel against Time. Is it to last an 
hundred years ? Then for an hundred years, we'll 
stand the siege of Time. Five hundred ? The gar- 
rison of memories shall be there still ! Storm on, all- 



270 JANUARY AND JUNE. 

devastating Time, well stay thee here. Those stone — 
ah ! lay them well ! The clink of those trowels is a 
sublime defiance to him, to whom name and fame 
have been, in other days, as wrecks and weeds to the 
gray Atlantic. 

In, from under the clear blue sky of heaven, we 
come to an humble chamber, guiltless of ornament. 
Therein is a man, and he bends over a canvass. The 
light of the setting sun plays in a halo round his head, 
and falls upon a picture. 'Tis of a dwelling, an 
humble dwelling, surrounded by old trees, and a hill 
rising in the distance, and a stream low murmuring 
in the fore-ground. His pencil deepens this shadow 
and that tint. The landscape is almost finished. 
1 What do you here ?' we ask. A light is kindled in his 
eye ; a glow is on his pale cheek ; he dashes his pen- 
cil upon the palette, as he exultingly exclaims, ' I 
have recalled it all ! There is the very tree from 
whose pendent limbs I swung, years and years ago ; 
and there is the window through whose little blue 
panes, day was wont to break upon my childish eyes, 
and there the stream where drifted my mimic sail, 
and there the hill where whirled my mimic mill. 
And there the roof — aye ! with the very moss upon 
its northern eaves — beneath which I loved my first 



THE PAST IS WITH US STILL. 271 

love and thought my first thought. All there ! — a 
transcript from memory. The old house, or so they 
tell me, is dismantled ; the roof lets in the stars ; 
weeds have sprung up in the hearth, and the grave- 
yard is more furrowed than ever. Let it crumble ; 
let its dust be strown to the winds, but its image shall 
not fade. Time ! do thy work ; I have thee now ! 
Efface the picture of that house from memory — it 
shall not be " lost to sight." And ere thy fingers 
shall dim that canvass, I shall have gone beyond thy 
potent sweep/ And well does he say, ' I have tri- 
umphed over Time ;' and well does he exult, that 
with the noiseless weapon of the pencil, he has van* 
quished the conqueror of kings. 

&t)t $ast C» toitj) us 8tti!> 

When Science grasped a filmy thread of light, 

That dimly floated in the empty air, 
And dared to draw the silver woof of night, 

Until she saw a star was clinging there, 
She trembled at the vision she had seen : 
It only told her that a star had been I 

That starry tress had faded in its flight, 

(So long it wandered through the blue abyss,) 

Before it met a mortal's startled sight 

While yet it journeyed 'twixt that world and thi^ 

Ferhaps some hand had borne the wondrous urn, 

Beyond the range of human thought's return ; 



272 JANUARY AND JUNE 

Perhaps extinguished — e'en the stars do die — 
Ere Heaven unfolded to her earnest eye. 

Things are around us that have ceased to be; 

And starry hopes, extinguish'd long ago, 
Still link us to the past. Who would be free, 

Or give that tearful past for all we know, 
Or dream, of bliss or blessing yet to come? 
All, all is mortal, till it reach the tomb ! 
And all unblest until it find its wings ! , 

That last year's Heaven of stars, oh ! who would give 
For aught beside ? Filled with translated things, 

Too bright to die, too beautiful to live. 



Old-fashioned Mothers have nearly all passed 
away with the blue check and homespun woolen of a 
simpler but purer time. Here and there one remains, 
truly ' accomplished/ in heart and life, for the sphere 
of home. 

Old-fashioned mothers — God bless them! — who 
followed us with heart and prayer, all over the 
world — lived in our lives and sorrowed in our griefs : 
who knew more about patching than poetry ; spoke 
no dialect but that of love ; never preached nor wan- 
dered ; c made melody with their hearts ;' and sent 



THE OLD-FASHIONED MOTHER. 273 

forth no books but living volumeB, that honored their 
authors and blessed the world. 

If woman have a broader mission now, in Heaven's 
name, let her fulfil it ! If she have aught to sing, 
like the daughters of Judah, let her sit down by the 
waters of Babel, and the world shall weep ; like 
Miriam, let her triumph-strain float gloriously over 
crushed but giant wrong, and the world shall hear ; 
but let the triumph and lament issue, as did the ora- 
cles of old, from behind the veil that cannot be rent : 
the ' inner temple ' of sacred Home. 

"Within it, should be enshrined the divinity of the 
place. Here and here only, would we find woman ; 
here imprison her — imprison her ? Aye, as the light- 
house ray, that flows out, pure as an angel's pulses, 
into the night and darkness of the world — a star 
beneath the cloud; but brightest there — warmest 
there — always there, where Heaven did kindle it, 
within the precinct, the very altar-place of home ! 

It is related of Madame Lucciola, a renowned vocal- 
ist, that she ruined a splendid tenor voice by her 
efforts to imitate male singing. Many a sweet voice 
and gentle influence in the social harmony, has been 
lost to the world in the same manner. Tiiere is no- 
thing more potent than woman's voice, if heard, not 



274 JANUARY AND JUNE. 

in the field, or the forum, but at home. The song- 
bird of Eastern story, borne from its native isle, grew 
dumb and languished. Seldom did it sing, and only 
when it saw a dweller from its distant land, or to its 
drowsy perch there came a tone, heard long ago in 
its own woods. So with the song that woman sings ; 
best heard within Home's sacred temple. Elsewhere, 
a trumpet-tone — perhaps a clarion-cry, but the lute- 
like voice has fled : the ' mezzo-soprano ' is lost in the 
discords of earth. 

The old homestead ! I wish I could paint it for 
you, as it is — no, no, I dare not say, as it is — as it was; 
that we could go together, to-night, from room to 
room ; sit by the old hearth, round which that circle 
of light and love once swept, and there linger, till all 
those simpler, purer times returned, and we Bhould 
grow young again. 

And how can we leave that spot, without remem- 
bering one form, that occupied, in days gone by, ■ the 
old arm-chair :' that old-fashioned Mother ? — one in 
all the world, the law of whose life was love ; one 
who was the divinity of our infancy, and the sacred 
presence in the shrine of our first earthly idolatry ; 
one whose heart is far below the frosts that gather so 
thickly on her brow ; one to whom we never grow 



THE OLD-FASHIONED MOTHER. 275 

old, but, in * the plumed troop • or the grave council, 
are children still ; one who welcomed us coming, 
blest us going, and never forgets us — never ! 

And when, in some closet, some drawer, some cor- 
ner, she finds a garment or a toy that once was yours, 
how does she weep, as she thinks you may be suffer- 
ing or sad. 

And when Spring 

'Leaves her robe on the trees/ 

does she not remember your tree, and wish you were 
there to see it in its glory ? 

Nothing is ' far,' and nothing ' long/ to her; she 
girdles the globe with a cincture of love ; she encir- 
cles her child, if he be on the face of the earth. 

Think you, as she sits in that well-remembered cor- 
ner to-night, she dreams her trembling arm is less 
powerful to protect him now, stalwart man though 
he is, than when it clasped him, in infancy, to her 
bosom ? 

Does the battle of life drive the wanderer to the 
old homestead, at last ? Her hand is upon his shoul- 
der ; her dim and fading eyes are kindled with some- 
thing of ! the light of other days/ as she gazes upon 



276 JANUARY AND JUNE. 

his brow : 'Be of stout heart, my Son ! No harm 
can reach thee here !' 

Surely, there is but one Heaven — one Mother — and 
one God. 

But sometimes that arm-chair -is set back against 
the wall, the corner is vacant, or another's, and they 
seek the dear, old occupant in the graveyard. God 
grant you never have ! Pray God, I never may ! 
# There are some there, tKugh, whom we loved — 
there must be, to make it easy dying ; some, perhaps, 
who were cradled on that mother's bosom; some, 
perhaps, who had grown fast to our own. 

The old graveyard in L ! How the cloudy 

years clear away from before that little acre in God's 
fallow field, and the memories return 

TSroittn Memories in Erofccn 3&5»me3* 

There's a little graveyard, brother, where the Lombardy 

poplars wave, 
Forever and forever, and above a little grave; 
Though the greensward has subsided, and there's no one 

there to tell— 
Twas when we were boys together — yet I should know it 

well 

When we were boys together ! Oh ! how far we must have 

run, 
The matin and the vesper blend so mournfully in one. 



BROKEN MEMORIES. 277 

l H. A-weary with the watching, through this being's cloudy 

bars, 
For i/Iie dear, dim days, my brother, that are rounded into 

stars. 

The lajt iime I wss there, brother, a robin had wove a nest, 
In the little fdiice they builded round the sleeper in his rest ; 
But the nest was silenfc, brother ; not a bird was there to sing 
"Where song itself once ne&tled, ere song had taken wing. 

I am sure you must rememhjr, the little grave I mean — 
There are only you and I now, but there once was one 

between : 
Twas before that grave vras hollowed, and before that song 

had fled, 
And before they told me, weeping, that^the beautiful was 

dead. 

Oh! they tell us of the fuUre — of purer lives and perfect 

men, 
But I shouldn't wonder, brother, we were nearer Heaven 

then; 
If by life's wild tempest dii van, that sweet port we've drifted 

past; 
Oh ! send a pilot, gentle Heaven, to bring us back at last. 

From home to home, my brother ! Oh 1 how breathless were 

the bliss, 
To be the boys together there — in that world as in this! 
Methought I heard a hail, brother, and it syllabled my name ; 
Oh 1 ship your oar a moment, let us listen whence it came. 

There away, like moonlight breaking, something dawning 

through the dark ! 
Kow the shadow shape is taking — sail of silver! silvei 

barque ! 



278 JANUARY AND JUNE. 

In the bow there stands an angel, and a cherub by her 

side; 
And that cherub, trust me, brother, is ' the little boy that 

died.' 

Angel? No! But wife and woman; she that looked me 

into love, 
While below she sweetly waited for her wings, and went 

above. 
Had I seen through her disguising, could I so have loved 

and mourned ? 
Oh! that loving, and that weeping; would have been to 

worship turned. 

As a maiden at her window, watches Love's pale planet rise, 
So my Mary's soul was watching, ever watching at her eyes. 
As that maiden, footsteps hearing, from the darkened window 

So some angel, earth-ward nearing, lured my Mary into 
dying! 

Oh! in what far seas we wander — for we must be off that 

shore, 
Where none are ever stranded, yet none are heard of more. 
I am Bure there is no record left, of one that ever sailed, 
Who was ever in such music, by such a vision hailed. 

But that lonely graveyard, brother — in its bosom let me rest, 
With the turf as green above me, as my childhood's feet 

impressed ; 
Where our mother's songs still linger, linger in the evening 

air, 
Sweetly dreamless could I slumber^slumber there, if any 

where ! 



THE DYING MUSICIAN. 279 

When tills being's wild campaigning, and the dreary march 

is done, 
Will you bear me then, my brother, where that march at 

morn begun ? 
But remember — not a mourner ! Let no tears be shed for 

him, 
For whose worthless sake when living, loving eyes could e'er 

grow dim. 

Will you rear a tablet, brother, with this simple emblem 

graced, 
Just a female figure bending — on her lips a finger placed? 
Thus they'll read it who may linger : ' Silent he, and silent 

we; 
What he was— but that's all over ! — what he is, is naught to 

thee!' 



There is a story told, some where, of a celebrated 
musician, who lay upon his dying bed. A youth 
entered an adjoining apartment, sat down to a piano, 
and began to play a tune. For some reason, he 
stopped abruptly in the midst of a strain, and left the 
room. The air was a favorite one with the dying son 
of song, and the notes untouched, so haunted him as 
he lay there, that he rose from his couch, seated him- 
self at the instrument, took up the tune, where the 
youth had left it, played it out, returned to his pillow, 
and in a moment, was dead. 



280 JANUARY AND JUNE. 

I know not that it is true, but it is touching and 
suggestive enough to he so. 

The world is full of life ; each life is a tune ; so 
the world is a great Orchestra ; and of them all, how 
few tunes are played through ! — how many ended as 
they were not begun ! 

Marches are sounded every day : strong, brave 
marches, that end too soon in ' a dying fall.' 

"Whirling waltzes, set off to the time of the young- 
est, merriest hearts, subside into dirges, sad and slow. 

Paeans turn to plaints, and all, at last, are hushed 
in the measured beat of the * muffled drums ' of life. 

And of all these strains of hope and harmony, how 
many are unended — no dying musician to take them 
up, when those who struck them first, are dumb or 
dead. 

But isn't it a pleasant thought that perJuzps some 
body may take up the tune, when w r e are dead — not 
a note lost, not a jar, not a discord, but all a swan- 
like harmony ? Perhaps ! perhaps ! There is some- 
thing hollow, like a knell, in that word. Tho veil 
that hides the future is woven of ' perhaps ;' in it the 
greatest ills have their solace, the brightest joys their 
cloud. 



THE DYING MUSICIAN. 281 

The broken strains of thought in this little took 
are, as yon will not grieve to know, now ended, and 
no body in the next room to play on. 

May neither your life nor mine, be composed of 
random ' scores/ but be a beautiful Anthem, harmony 
in all its parts, melody in all its tones ; not a strain 
wanting, not a note out of the tune ; till ' the daugh- 
ters of music are brought low,' and the life-anthem i% 



HSutretr* 



